JFK's granddaughter revealed Saturday that she has terminal cancer, writing in an essay in The New Yorker that one of her doctors said she could live about another year and criticizing the policies pursued by her cousin, the secretary of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy Jr..
Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Kennedy's daughter Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, said she was diagnosed in May 2024, when she was 34 years old. After the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her white blood cell count was high. It turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, most often found in older people.
Her essay was published on the 62nd anniversary the murder of her grandfather.
Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, wrote that she has undergone chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants (the first using her sister's cells and the second from an unrelated donor) and has also participated in clinical trials. During the last trial, she wrote, her doctor told her “he could keep me alive for maybe a year.”
Schlossberg also said policies supported by RFK could harm cancer patients like her. Caroline Kennedy urged senators reject his confirmation.
“As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers committed to improving the lives of others, I watched as Bobby committed nearly half a billion dollars to research into mRNA vaccines, a technology that could be used against some types of cancer,” the essay states.
Schlossberg wrote about her fears that her daughter and son would not remember her. She feels betrayed and sad that she will not be able to continue to live “that wonderful life” she lived with her husband George Moran. Although her parents and siblings try to hide their pain from her, she says she feels it every day.
“All my life I've tried to be good, to be a good student, a good sister and a good daughter, to protect my mother and never upset her or make her angry,” she said. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to the life of our family, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.”
