On the menu today: It’s amazing that satirical websites such as the Babylon Bee can keep up with the world, because a headline like “Presidential candidate admits a worm ate part of his brain” would probably be deemed too outlandish and preposterous for a Christopher Buckley novel. But there’s a serious point burrowed in, worm-like, amongst all the Dune jokes and other wisecracks about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s past medical condition. None of the three major presidential candidates have released their medical records, and the past examples of Paul Tsongas and, I regrettably admit, John Fetterman, demonstrate that we can’t just take a candidate’s word for it, nor a note from their doctors.
RFK Jr.’s Revelation Raises Some Serious Questions
I don’t know about you, but this week’s New York Times scoop about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. surviving a bout with a parasitic worm that had eaten a portion of his brain made me feel a little better about the guy, not worse. Besides sympathy for his ordeal, at least this explains some things. “Why the heck did he say that?” “Ah, brain worms.”
You start to grade Kennedy on a curve. Hey, why did he not tell his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, that he supports the right to an abortion, all the way up to full-term? Ah, brain worms. Why is his campaign’s “director of messaging” getting paid $14,000 per month while “reconnecting with spirit” in Costa Rica? Brain worms! Why is his campaign paying $8,000 a month to a digital strategist who graduated from high school in 2021? Again, brain worms.
In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom had either treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year of brain cancer.
Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said.
While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head.
The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition. . . .
About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues.
“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
In the interview with The Times, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fogginess and had no aftereffects from the parasite, which he said had not required treatment. Asked last week if any of Mr. Kennedy’s health issues could compromise his fitness for the presidency, Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told The Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”
Boasting “I’m the youngest and healthiest out of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and myself” really isn’t that much of a flex. Kennedy turned 70 in January. Trump turns 78 in June, and Biden turns 82 shortly after the election.
You know who else is younger and healthier than Trump and Biden? Probably you, and the overwhelming majority of the American people.
(According to the Social Security Administration’s actuarial tables, the average 70-year-old man will live 13.6 more years, the average 78-year-old man will live 8.95 more years, and the average 82-year-old man will live 6.96 more years.)
I’ll get to more brain-worm jokes in a second, but there’s a serious point in here. The Times learned about Kennedy’s bout with the brain worm from the deposition in his divorce proceedings. It’s good that Kennedy feels like he’s recovered, and that he isn’t having any lingering effects of short-term or long-term memory loss. But his campaign refused to turn over any medical records.
And Kennedy’s not alone. In February, Biden released a “summary” of his most recent medical tests but not his medical records. The summary stated Biden was “fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exceptions or accommodations.” In November, Trump released a three-paragraph letter from his doctor declaring he was in “excellent health” and his “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”
You know how we know that Jill Stein (who turns 74 next week) and Cornel West (who turns 71 in June) are really afterthoughts in this election cycle? No one even cares about their medical records. That’s right, America. Out of the five top presidential candidates, Kennedy’s the youngest at age 70.
Before you turn over the keys to the Oval Office and entrust somebody with a four-year contract to run the executive branch and make life-or-death decisions in a dangerous world, wouldn’t you like a little documentation that their noggin and everything else is working the way it should?
If you hear someone scoffing, “Surely a presidential candidate wouldn’t cover up a major health issue,” that’s a good indicator that the person saying that has never heard of Paul Tsongas:
In 1992, Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas was one of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination. He had been treated for a form of lymph-node cancer, or lymphoma, from 1983 to 1986, but when he ran in 1992, he declared himself “cured.” Tak Takvorian, Tsongas’s doctor at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told reporters, “I’m very confident that he’s fine.”
Tsongas won the New Hampshire primary but lost ground to Bill Clinton and withdrew from the race in March. It did not take long before it became clear that had he won the race, the best-case scenario was that the new president would have faced enormous challenges. In December 1992, he announced that a new growth in his abdomen was cancerous, and he underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He spent a good portion of the next four years in hospitals, dealing with complications from the treatment. Had Tsongas been elected in 1992, he would not have lived to the end of his first term: He died on January 18, 1997, two days before Clinton’s second inauguration.
What’s more, Tsongas’s doctors belatedly admitted that their public statements misled the public to believe the candidate was no longer at risk of cancer:
After Dana-Farber came under criticism earlier this year for not having given a full account of Mr. Tsongas’s cancer, the institute’s president, Prof. Christopher T. Walsh, appointed an internal review committee that found that many policies had not been followed when Mr. Tsongas’s main doctors, Ronald W. Takvorian and George P. Canellos, publicly discussed the case.
Dana-Farber “made a bevy of mistakes,” its physician in chief, Dr. David M. Livingston, said in an interview. Mr. Tsongas’s cancerous node “was a relapse, and in this disease it is not a good sign for the future,” Dr. Livingston said. He disputed Dr. Takvorian, who insisted in an interview that the solitary node was “not significant.”
Professor Walsh said, “The record should have been fully disclosed so people could make their own evaluation” of how the recurrence affected Mr. Tsongas’s prognosis.
I’m as pleasantly surprised as anyone with Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman’s steadfast support of Israel, his gleeful criticism of his indicted colleague Bob Menendez, and his declaration, “It isn’t xenophobic to be concerned about the border.” And he appears to be recovering well from his life-threatening stroke suffered in May 2022, and we should all be thankful for that.
But we all saw Fetterman’s lone debate with GOP opponent Mehmet Oz in October 2022, and that debate was held about a week after Fetterman’s doctor, Clifford Chen, released a letter declaring, “Overall, Lt. Gov. Fetterman is well and shows strong commitment to maintaining good fitness and health practices. He has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.” Except during the debate, Fetterman struggled to speak.
The lesson is that a candidate can get a doctor to write just about whatever he wants them to write. In 2018, Dr. Harold Bornstein, Trump’s doctor, told CNN, “[Trump] dictated that whole letter. I didn’t write that letter. . . . I just made it up as I went along.” This was the letter that claimed of Trump, “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
A note from a doctor just isn’t something we can trust anymore. But medical records — those are hard to fake or spin. Either your vitals are within normal ranges, or they aren’t.
Okay, let me get two more jokes out of the way:
I assume the worm died of malnutrition.
If Pfizer developed a vaccine against brain worms, would RFK Jr. take it?
ADDENDUM: Elaborating a bit on a point in yesterday’s newsletter, your tax dollars are being used to keep the Taliban in business:
Since [the Taliban retook the country in August 2021], the United States has appropriated or otherwise made available over $8 billion in assistance to Afghanistan and Afghan refugees. . . .
The Taliban regime derives revenue from this aid in the form of “licenses,” “taxes,” and “administrative fees” imposed on NGOs and their employees as a condition for operating in Afghanistan. . . .
SIGAR [the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] found that the Taliban likely gained access to approximately $57.6 million in funds that DOD, State, and USAID provided to the former Afghan government.