A Heartbreaking Diagnosis and a Political Rebuke
Tatiana Schlossberg, the 35-year-old granddaughter of former US President John F. Kennedy, has publicly revealed she has less than a year to live after being diagnosed with terminal blood cancer. The environmental journalist shared the devastating details of her illness in a deeply personal essay for The New Yorker, published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather's assassination.
Her world changed just hours after she gave birth to her daughter last year. In May 2024, doctors diagnosed her with myeloid leukaemia, a type of blood cancer, after noticing her 'strange' white blood cell count in the hospital. Her doctor has since informed her that the latest clinical trial might keep her 'alive for a year, maybe'.
A Mother's Anguish and a Cousin's Stance
In her writing, Tatiana's immediate thoughts turned to her children. 'My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn't remember me,' she confessed. She expressed profound sorrow that her son might only retain fragmented memories, while her profound illness prevented her from caring for her newborn daughter.
'I didn't ever really get to take care of my daughter—I couldn't change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants,' she wrote. 'I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don't know who, really, she thinks I am.'
The article also delivered a stinging critique of her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Tatiana blasted his well-known skepticism of vaccines, expressing fear for her own future as an immunocompromised person. 'Bobby has said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,”' she noted, countering that he likely doesn't remember the era before polio vaccines.
Policy Fears Amid a Personal Battle
Her criticism extended to specific policy actions. She witnessed her cousin 'cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines' and slash 'billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health'. This directly fuelled her anxieties about funding for the leukaemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering that her survival depends on.
She also revealed a chilling personal connection to another policy area. After a postpartum haemorrhage, she was given misoprostol to stop the bleeding, a drug also used in medication abortions. She wrote, 'I freeze when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me,' noting that the drug is now 'under review' by the FDA at RFK Jr's urging.
Who is Tatiana Schlossberg?
Tatiana is the daughter of former US ambassador Caroline Kennedy, 67, and Edwin Schlossberg, 80. She has two siblings: her younger brother, Jack Schlossberg, who recently announced his bid for Congress, and her elder sister, Rose Kennedy Schlossberg.
An accomplished academic, she is a Yale graduate and also holds a master's degree in US history from the University of Oxford. She is a respected climate change journalist and the author of 'Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have'. After stints at The New York Times and The Record, she now works as a freelance journalist.
