JFK’s Granddaughter Tatiana Schlossberg Reveals Terminal Cancer, Calls Cousin RFK Jr. an “Embarrassment”

Tatiana Schlossberg — daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy — has shared a heartbreaking update about her health while publicly criticizing her cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In a deeply personal essay for The New Yorker, the 35-year-old journalist revealed that she has been battling terminal acute myeloid leukemia for the past year and a half. She was diagnosed shortly after giving birth to her second child in May 2024.

Her form of leukemia includes a rare mutation, inversion 3, typically found in much older patients. “Every doctor I saw asked me if I had spent a lot of time at Ground Zero,” she wrote, noting the high rates of blood cancer among first responders. “I am not elderly. I had just turned 34.”

Taking Aim at RFK Jr.: “An Embarrassment to Me and My Family”

Midway through her essay, Schlossberg sharply criticized her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was being nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services while she underwent treatment.

She called him “an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family.”

Schlossberg explained that while her survival depended on medical innovations funded by the federal government, RFK Jr. was publicly known for anti-vaccine statements and was moving to cut medical research funding.

She described her fear in vivid detail:

“I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get my vaccines again, leaving me immunocompromised — along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly.”

She also reminded readers of the suffering caused before vaccines existed.

“Bobby probably doesn’t remember the millions of people paralyzed or killed by polio,” she wrote.

Family Opposition: A Private Political Rift Becomes Public

Schlossberg revealed that her mother, Caroline Kennedy, submitted a letter to the Senate opposing RFK Jr.’s confirmation, while her brother Jack also spoke out against him.

Meanwhile, she watched in alarm as RFK Jr.:

cut nearly $500 million in mRNA vaccine research,
slashed billions from the National Institutes of Health,
and threatened to reshape the expert panel guiding preventive cancer screenings.

These decisions, she said, had real consequences for her own battle:
“I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission.”

A Life-Saving Drug Under Threat

Schlossberg also highlighted how one of her emergency postpartum medications — misoprostol — is currently under FDA review due to RFK Jr.’s stance on abortion-related drugs.

She described freezing at the thought of what might have happened if the drug had not been available when she hemorrhaged after childbirth.

A Final Reflection: Science, Oceans, and What Might Have Been

In the closing section of her essay, Schlossberg wrote that before her diagnosis, she had planned to write her next book about oceans. In a poignant twist, she discovered that one of her chemotherapy drugs “owes its existence to an ocean animal.”

That treatment was developed in 1959 by scientists at UC Berkeley — research almost certainly funded by the government.

“The very thing Bobby has already cut,” she concluded.