President John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, openly criticized her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a revealing essay where she also disclosed her private battle with terminal cancer.
At 35, Schlossberg recounted her distress as she lay in a hospital bed, witnessing RFK Jr.’s appointment to a significant health position in February.
She expressed that the healthcare system she depended on felt “strained and unstable” following RFK Jr.’s confirmation. Her primary concern was losing access to vital leukemia and bone-marrow trials at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which she considered her best hope for remission.
In a piece commemorating the 62nd anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Schlossberg shared that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of blood cancer, in May 2024.
She detailed in her New Yorker essay that the diagnosis came as a surprise, as she had been asymptomatic. It was only detected through routine blood tests after the birth of her second child.
Within the same article, she delivered a sharp critique of her second cousin, RFK Jr., for his role as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Schlossberg wrote that RFK Jr was ‘mostly an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family’ as she underwent CAR-T therapy, a treatment developed through decades of government-funded research.
She said she watched from her hospital bed as he was confirmed for the top health post ‘in the face of logic and common sense,’ despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or government.
Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, revealed she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer (Pictured: Tatiana seen with her mother Caroline Kennedy, who served as the US Ambassador to Australia under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2024, and previously served as Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama)
In the same piece, Schlossberg launched a scathing attack on her second cousin, RFK Jr, over his appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services
Pictured: President John Kennedy and his wife Jackie and their children John Jr and Caroline at Palm Beach, Florida in April 14, 1963
Her criticism came after RFK Jr. suspended his presidential campaign in August 2024 and endorsed Donald Trump, who vowed to ‘let Bobby go wild’ on health.
Schlossberg said her mother wrote to the Senate to block his confirmation and her brother had spoken out against his ‘lies for months.’
Schlossberg said the health-care system she relied on suddenly felt ‘strained, shaky’ after RFK Jr.’s confirmation.
She accused him of slashing billions from the National Institutes of Health, canceling hundreds of grants and clinical trials, and cutting nearly half a billion dollars for mRNA vaccine research – technology she noted could be used against certain cancers.
She worried about losing access to leukemia and bone-marrow trials as a result.
She also condemned RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance, quoting his claim that ‘There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.’
Schlossberg contrasted that with her father’s memory of the polio vaccine, which he said ‘felt like freedom.’
As an immunocompromised patient, she feared she would never be able to get vaccines again, leaving her vulnerable ‘along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly.’
The 35-year-old, the sister of Kennedy political scion Jack Schlossberg (seen together), said she received the diagnosis after giving birth last year when a doctor noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count
The acute myeloid leukemia with Inversion 3 that Schlossberg was diagnosed with is a rare and aggressive form of cancer that is typically difficult to uncover
Schlossberg said she froze when she learned that misoprostol – a drug that saved her life during a postpartum hemorrhage – was ‘under review’ by the FDA at RFK Jr.’s urging because it is used in medication abortion.
‘I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives,’ she wrote.
She also condemned RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine stance, quoting his claim that ‘There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.’
Schlossberg contrasted that with her father’s memory of the polio vaccine, which he said ‘felt like freedom.’
As an immunocompromised patient, she feared she would never be able to get vaccines again, leaving her vulnerable ‘along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly.’
Schlossberg said she froze when she learned that misoprostol – a drug that saved her life during a postpartum hemorrhage – was ‘under review’ by the FDA at RFK Jr’s urging because it is used in medication abortion.
‘I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives,’ she wrote.
The essay closed on a personal note. Schlossberg said her illness derailed plans to write a book about the oceans and reflected on the irony that one of her chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine, was derived from a Caribbean sponge and discovered through government-funded research – the very funding RFK Jr. had cut.
‘I remind my son that I am a writer,’ she wrote, ‘so that he will know that I was not just a sick person.’
Daily Mail has reached out to RFK Jr’s team for comment.
