Must See: Sanjay Gupta Holding A Brain As He Goes Deep On RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm

CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta used a prop brain to explain Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s recent claim that his brain was infected with a worm.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Kennedy claimed during a 2012 divorce deposition that medical scans showed that he had a “dead parasite” in his brain. The independent presidential candidate said at the time that the worm ate part of his brain, causing memory loss and mental fogginess, and then died.

Gupta, who has experience as a neurosurgeon removing parasitic worms from patients, revealed to CNN anchor Brianna Keilar that although the infection is rare it does occur amongst individuals who consume undercooked pork.

The medical correspondent then pulled out a brain model to explain how the parasite is removed from the human brain.

KEILAR: We have CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joining us. You’re a neurosurgeon, Sanjay, you’ve actually operated on these kinds of cases when it comes to these parasitic worms and their removal. Tell us about this. It’s not that common.

GUPTA: It’s not that common, although it does happen. Typically, it starts off from people that may have eaten pork that is undercooked, and the little eggs or larvae, they can get into the food supply. Ultimately, if those get into your bloodstream, they can travel all over the body. And this does happen, especially in places where those types of eating habits are more common.

Let me show you an image of this, just so you have a visual of what we’re talking about here. You imagine this tiny little larvae gets into areas of the body, in this case the brain, and they may grow a little bit. Those are the purple spots you’re seeing there in the brain. Sometimes they won’t cause any symptoms at all. People won’t even know that they have them. Sometimes people might have headaches. Sometimes people could develop seizures. It’s not really associated with brain fog or memory problems, per se, but they can be problematic.

A lot of times there’s nothing to do about it. They’re not causing symptoms. Sometimes there’s medications, parasitic medications, or sometimes you have to do an operation, as you mentioned. And you know, here’s a brain model here. So you can imagine that’s sort of near the surface of the brain. If you had one of these cysts, you’d make a little bony opening in the skull and basically remove that cyst which, which sort of represents this parasite. And that is sometimes necessary as well.

So it does happen. It is rare. I think you don’t really describe it as having eaten the brain as much as sort of living there in the brain and possibly causing these problems.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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