Tatiana Schlossberg, 35, Slams Cousin RFK Jr.’s Health Legacy in Emotional Essay About Her Terminal Cancer Journey

Tatiana Schlossberg is publicly criticizing her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that his approach as secretary of health and human services has made her own battle with terminal cancer feel even more precarious.

In an essay published in The New Yorker on Saturday, Nov. 22, the 35-year-old — the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg — revealed that she has acute myeloid leukemia. She wrote that she received her diagnosis shortly after the birth of her second child in May 2024 and has been in treatment ever since.

Near the end of the piece, Schlossberg connected her personal experience to decisions coming out of Washington, reserving her sharpest words for Kennedy Jr.’s record on vaccines and research funding. She noted that while she was undergoing CAR-T therapy — a treatment she described as the result of decades of publicly funded scientific work — her cousin was moving toward confirmation as the nation’s top health official.

She wrote that Kennedy Jr.’s rise in politics has felt painful and alienating to her family, saying his public profile has often been “an embarrassment” to those closest to him. Schlossberg also recalled the moment in August 2024 when he ended his independent presidential run and endorsed Donald Trump, who she said pledged to “let Bobby go wild” on health policy.

Schlossberg described watching the confirmation process from a hospital bed, frustrated that Kennedy Jr. was elevated to lead federal health agencies despite having no background in medicine or public health. She added that her mother tried to block the nomination and that her brother, Jack Schlossberg, had been speaking out against what she called Kennedy Jr.’s misinformation.

From her perspective, the consequences were not abstract. She wrote that the health system she depends on suddenly felt unstable. At Columbia University, where her husband George Moran works as a doctor, researchers worried about losing jobs or being forced to halt work because of federal cuts. Schlossberg said those fears turned personal, too: if her husband had to change jobs, their insurance situation could become uncertain now that she has a preexisting condition.

She then focused on vaccines, saying Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism left her anxious about whether she would be able to receive immunizations again after treatment — a concern she said extends to cancer survivors, children, older adults, and other immunocompromised people. She contrasted his claims that no vaccine is both safe and effective with her father’s memories of polio before vaccination became widespread. When she asked him what the polio vaccine meant to people then, he told her it felt like “freedom.”

Schlossberg went on to list policy moves she believes threaten patients like her: cuts to research into mRNA vaccines, reductions to National Institutes of Health funding, and pressure on expert panels responsible for preventive cancer-screening guidance. She wrote that canceled grants and trials ripple outward to thousands of people, and that she feared losing access to the clinical trials she sees as her best chance at remission.

She also described a moment early in her illness when she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and was treated with misoprostol. Noting that the drug is also used in medication abortion, she said she is shaken by the idea that the same medicine might be harder to access in the future if federal reviews or restrictions move forward.

In her closing reflections, Schlossberg returned to the theme of long-term, publicly supported discovery. Before she became ill, she had planned to write a book about the oceans and their fragile future. She pointed out that one of her chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine, was developed from research tied to a Caribbean sea sponge — work made possible through the kind of government funding she says Kennedy Jr. is now cutting.

Her comments arrive amid broader family criticism of Kennedy Jr.’s tenure. A day earlier, his younger brother Maxwell Taylor Kennedy published an op-ed arguing that Kennedy Jr. is betraying their father Robert F. Kennedy’s legacy.Tatiana Schlossberg is publicly criticizing her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that his approach as secretary of health and human services has made her own battle with terminal cancer feel even more precarious.

In an essay published in The New Yorker on Saturday, Nov. 22, the 35-year-old — the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg — revealed that she has acute myeloid leukemia. She wrote that she received her diagnosis shortly after the birth of her second child in May 2024 and has been in treatment ever since.

Near the end of the piece, Schlossberg connected her personal experience to decisions coming out of Washington, reserving her sharpest words for Kennedy Jr.’s record on vaccines and research funding. She noted that while she was undergoing CAR-T therapy — a treatment she described as the result of decades of publicly funded scientific work — her cousin was moving toward confirmation as the nation’s top health official.

She wrote that Kennedy Jr.’s rise in politics has felt painful and alienating to her family, saying his public profile has often been “an embarrassment” to those closest to him. Schlossberg also recalled the moment in August 2024 when he ended his independent presidential run and endorsed Donald Trump, who she said pledged to “let Bobby go wild” on health policy.

Schlossberg described watching the confirmation process from a hospital bed, frustrated that Kennedy Jr. was elevated to lead federal health agencies despite having no background in medicine or public health. She added that her mother tried to block the nomination and that her brother, Jack Schlossberg, had been speaking out against what she called Kennedy Jr.’s misinformation.

From her perspective, the consequences were not abstract. She wrote that the health system she depends on suddenly felt unstable. At Columbia University, where her husband George Moran works as a doctor, researchers worried about losing jobs or being forced to halt work because of federal cuts. Schlossberg said those fears turned personal, too: if her husband had to change jobs, their insurance situation could become uncertain now that she has a preexisting condition.

She then focused on vaccines, saying Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism left her anxious about whether she would be able to receive immunizations again after treatment — a concern she said extends to cancer survivors, children, older adults, and other immunocompromised people. She contrasted his claims that no vaccine is both safe and effective with her father’s memories of polio before vaccination became widespread. When she asked him what the polio vaccine meant to people then, he told her it felt like “freedom.”

Schlossberg went on to list policy moves she believes threaten patients like her: cuts to research into mRNA vaccines, reductions to National Institutes of Health funding, and pressure on expert panels responsible for preventive cancer-screening guidance. She wrote that canceled grants and trials ripple outward to thousands of people, and that she feared losing access to the clinical trials she sees as her best chance at remission.

She also described a moment early in her illness when she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and was treated with misoprostol. Noting that the drug is also used in medication abortion, she said she is shaken by the idea that the same medicine might be harder to access in the future if federal reviews or restrictions move forward.

In her closing reflections, Schlossberg returned to the theme of long-term, publicly supported discovery. Before she became ill, she had planned to write a book about the oceans and their fragile future. She pointed out that one of her chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine, was developed from research tied to a Caribbean sea sponge — work made possible through the kind of government funding she says Kennedy Jr. is now cutting.

Her comments arrive amid broader family criticism of Kennedy Jr.’s tenure. A day earlier, his younger brother Maxwell Taylor Kennedy published an op-ed arguing that Kennedy Jr. is betraying their father Robert F. Kennedy’s legacy.Tatiana Schlossberg is publicly criticizing her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that his approach as secretary of health and human services has made her own battle with terminal cancer feel even more precarious.

In an essay published in The New Yorker on Saturday, Nov. 22, the 35-year-old — the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg — revealed that she has acute myeloid leukemia. She wrote that she received her diagnosis shortly after the birth of her second child in May 2024 and has been in treatment ever since.

Near the end of the piece, Schlossberg connected her personal experience to decisions coming out of Washington, reserving her sharpest words for Kennedy Jr.’s record on vaccines and research funding. She noted that while she was undergoing CAR-T therapy — a treatment she described as the result of decades of publicly funded scientific work — her cousin was moving toward confirmation as the nation’s top health official.

She wrote that Kennedy Jr.’s rise in politics has felt painful and alienating to her family, saying his public profile has often been “an embarrassment” to those closest to him. Schlossberg also recalled the moment in August 2024 when he ended his independent presidential run and endorsed Donald Trump, who she said pledged to “let Bobby go wild” on health policy.

Schlossberg described watching the confirmation process from a hospital bed, frustrated that Kennedy Jr. was elevated to lead federal health agencies despite having no background in medicine or public health. She added that her mother tried to block the nomination and that her brother, Jack Schlossberg, had been speaking out against what she called Kennedy Jr.’s misinformation.

From her perspective, the consequences were not abstract. She wrote that the health system she depends on suddenly felt unstable. At Columbia University, where her husband George Moran works as a doctor, researchers worried about losing jobs or being forced to halt work because of federal cuts. Schlossberg said those fears turned personal, too: if her husband had to change jobs, their insurance situation could become uncertain now that she has a preexisting condition.

She then focused on vaccines, saying Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism left her anxious about whether she would be able to receive immunizations again after treatment — a concern she said extends to cancer survivors, children, older adults, and other immunocompromised people. She contrasted his claims that no vaccine is both safe and effective with her father’s memories of polio before vaccination became widespread. When she asked him what the polio vaccine meant to people then, he told her it felt like “freedom.”

Schlossberg went on to list policy moves she believes threaten patients like her: cuts to research into mRNA vaccines, reductions to National Institutes of Health funding, and pressure on expert panels responsible for preventive cancer-screening guidance. She wrote that canceled grants and trials ripple outward to thousands of people, and that she feared losing access to the clinical trials she sees as her best chance at remission.

She also described a moment early in her illness when she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage and was treated with misoprostol. Noting that the drug is also used in medication abortion, she said she is shaken by the idea that the same medicine might be harder to access in the future if federal reviews or restrictions move forward.

In her closing reflections, Schlossberg returned to the theme of long-term, publicly supported discovery. Before she became ill, she had planned to write a book about the oceans and their fragile future. She pointed out that one of her chemotherapy drugs, cytarabine, was developed from research tied to a Caribbean sea sponge — work made possible through the kind of government funding she says Kennedy Jr. is now cutting.

Her comments arrive amid broader family criticism of Kennedy Jr.’s tenure. A day earlier, his younger brother Maxwell Taylor Kennedy published an op-ed arguing that Kennedy Jr. is betraying their father Robert F. Kennedy’s legacy.