Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of President John F Kennedy, has issued a devastating warning about her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr's rise to power, saying from her hospital bed that his decisions as US Health Secretary could endanger cancer patients like her.
Her explosive claims appear in her New Yorker essay, written while she undergoes relentless treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia. In one of the essay's most haunting lines, Schlossberg writes: 'Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.'
Watching RFK Jr's Confirmation While Fighting for Her Life
Schlossberg recounts that she watched RFK Jr's Senate confirmation unfold from a hospital bed after CAR T-cell therapy and multiple bone-marrow transplants. She emphasises that the therapy keeping her alive exists only because of decades of government-funded medical research.
She describes her shock that her cousin was chosen to lead the agency overseeing the very research she depends on, writing that he had 'never worked in medicine, public health, or the government.'
Her mother, Caroline Kennedy, had even written a letter to senators urging them to block the nomination, while her brother publicly challenged RFK Jr's statements.
Fear and Anxiety as RFK Jr Cuts Medical Research Funding
The essay details the moment Schlossberg realised the medical system she relied on was being reshaped by someone who has spent years undermining the science behind her lifesaving treatments.
She writes that she 'watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines' and cut 'billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health', describing the cancellation of hundreds of grants and clinical trials affecting thousands of patients.
At Columbia University, where her husband George works as a physician, researchers and clinicians did not know if they would still have jobs. Many were unsure whether their studies could survive the cuts.
Schlossberg confesses she feared losing future access to the clinical trials that had kept her alive. She worried whether cancer and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering would still receive federal support.
A Vaccine Skeptic in Charge of US Health Policy
Tension in the essay peaks when Schlossberg addresses RFK Jr's long-standing scepticism of vaccines. She cites his claim that 'there's no vaccine that is safe and effective,' a statement she contrasts with her own dependence on revaccination after losing her immune system to treatment.
She writes that she was 'especially concerned' she would no longer be able to receive the vaccines essential to rebuilding her immune defences.
As someone who must start her childhood vaccinations from scratch, she warns that any disruption to vaccine policy could leave millions of patients, including her, dangerously exposed.
In a powerful moment, she recalls asking her father about receiving the polio vaccine. He told her it felt like 'freedom.'
Life-Saving Drug Now Under Political Threat
Schlossberg writes that misoprostol — the drug that helped save her during a postpartum haemorrhage — is now 'under review' at the FDA because of pressure from RFK Jr.
She says she 'freeze[s] when I think about what would have happened' if the medication had not been immediately available.
A Family Torn Apart During Her Fight for Survival
The essay makes clear that RFK Jr's political ascent has deeply strained family relationships. She writes that her cousin's rise unfolded 'mostly as an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family' during the most traumatic period of her life.
As she endures clinical trials, organ damage, infections and near-fatal episodes, Schlossberg warns that America's health system is being reshaped by someone whose policies may jeopardise the very research keeping countless patients alive.
Her final message is unmistakably urgent: these policies are not academic debates.
For patients like her, they are life and death.
