John F Kennedy’s granddaughter has revealed she has terminal cancer, making the announcement on the anniversary of the ex-US president’s assassination.
Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, has also criticised policies pushed by her relative, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a long-time vaccine critic.
She said measures backed by RFK Jr could hurt cancer patients like her, and her mother Caroline Kennedy, a former US ambassador, had urged senators to reject his confirmation in Congress in January.
Mr Kennedy has sparked controversy after saying COVID-19 shots were no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, firing the panel that makes vaccine recommendations, and refusing to strongly back vaccinations as a measles outbreak worsened.
Ms Schlossberg, who said she was diagnosed in May last year, made her remarks in an essay for The New Yorker on Saturday, which was published on the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather’s assassination in Dallas in 1963.
She said of RFK Jr: “As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers.”
After the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her high white blood cell count. It turned out to be acute myeloid leukaemia with a rare mutation, called Inversion 3, mostly seen in older people.
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Ms Schlossberg, an environmental journalist, wrote she has undergone rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants, the first using cells from her sister and the next from an unrelated donor, and participated in clinical trials.
In the article, she disclosed that one of her doctors during the latest trial told her “he could keep me alive for a year, maybe”. She also spoke of her fears her daughter and son will not remember her.
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Her parents are JFK’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and Edwin Schlossberg. Her grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the wife of the 35th US president, often referred to as Jackie O, died aged 64 of cancer in 1994, when she was under the age of five.
Ms Schlossberg said she feels cheated and sad that she won’t get to keep living “the wonderful life” she had with her husband, George Moran.
While her parents and siblings try to shelter her from their pain, she said she feels it every day.
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“For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” Ms Schlossberg said.
“Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
