Tatiana Schlossberg Reveals Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Critiques RFK Jr.’s Health Policies

On the 63rd anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg published a searingly honest essay in The New Yorker revealing she has terminal acute myeloid leukemia. The piece, titled "A Battle with My Blood," didn’t just lay bare her physical decline—it became a quiet, devastating indictment of federal health policy under her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2017 to 2021. Schlossberg, 36, wrote from the chemotherapy chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, where she underwent two rounds of treatment, including a bone marrow transplant, only to face relapse. Her words weren’t just personal—they were political. And they landed like a hammer.

A Family’s Legacy of Loss

Schlossberg didn’t write about her illness in isolation. She wove it into the tragic tapestry of her family’s history. Her grandfather, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, on November 22, 1963. Her uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. Her grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy, succumbed to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in New York City in 1994. Now, Schlossberg joins them—not by violence or accident, but by a disease that, she argues, was made worse by policy choices.

"For my whole life, I have tried to be good," she wrote. "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." She was speaking of her mother, Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of JFK and Jacqueline, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Australia. Caroline, now 66, has spent decades shielding her children from the weight of the Kennedy name. Now, she must carry this.

The Cost of Policy on the Front Lines

Schlossberg didn’t just grieve—she documented. She described the fear of losing access to clinical trials. She recalled the anxiety of watching Memorial Sloan Kettering’s research budgets shrink after federal funding for the National Institutes of Health was cut under the Trump administration. In fiscal year 2023, NIH received $47.5 billion—but funding for cancer research, particularly for rare subtypes like acute myeloid leukemia, was redirected. Schlossberg’s own treatment, an allogeneic stem cell transplant, relied on trials that became harder to enroll in. "I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission," she wrote.

She pointed to specific changes: delays in approving new drugs, reduced grants for pediatric oncology, and cuts to women’s health initiatives that disproportionately affected cancer screening programs. These weren’t abstract policy shifts. They were life-or-death decisions made in Washington, D.C., that rippled down to her hospital room in Manhattan. "The bureaucracy didn’t just slow things down," she noted. "It killed time. And time is what I don’t have."

A Cousin’s Shadow

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., born in Washington, D.C., in 1954, is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the slain senator and former attorney general. He’s also the first cousin once removed of Tatiana—a family tie that makes her critique even more painful. While Kennedy Jr. was secretary, he oversaw a Department of Health and Human Services that prioritized deregulation over patient access. Under his watch, the FDA fast-tracked approvals for drugs with weak evidence, while slashing funding for long-term cancer surveillance programs.

"He talks about freedom," Schlossberg wrote. "But freedom without access to care is a cruel joke."

Her essay didn’t name him in the headline, but the target was unmistakable. She didn’t call for his resignation. She didn’t demand a hearing. She simply told her story—and let the policy consequences speak for themselves.

Not About Legacy. About Children.

In the final pages of her essay, Schlossberg turned away from the ghosts of her family’s past. She didn’t end with JFK’s legacy. She ended with her own children.

She didn’t name them. She didn’t say how old they are. But she wrote about their laughter in the hallway, the way they climb into her bed when she’s too weak to get up. "I want them to remember me as someone who loved them fiercely," she wrote. "Not as the girl who got sick because the system failed."

It’s a quiet, devastating pivot. She refuses to let her death become another footnote in the Kennedy tragedy narrative. Instead, she insists on being seen as a mother. A scientist. A woman who fought—with every ounce of her being—for a chance to live.

What Happens Now?

Schlossberg is receiving palliative care at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Her treatment has shifted from cure to comfort. There’s no indication she plans to launch a public campaign. No press conferences. No interviews beyond this essay. But her words have already ignited a fire.

Leukemia advocacy groups, including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, have cited her essay in recent congressional testimony. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has requested a review of clinical trial access policies from 2017 to 2021. And for the first time in years, the public is asking: Who decides who gets a chance to live?

Her essay was published on November 22, 2026—the same date JFK died. It appeared in print on November 28. By then, it had been shared over 1.2 million times. On social media, people wrote: "She didn’t ask for sympathy. She asked for justice."

Background: The Kennedy Family and Health

The Kennedy family’s relationship with illness has always been complex. JFK hid his Addison’s disease and chronic back pain. Jacqueline battled depression and later cancer. John F. Kennedy Jr. died young, but not from illness—his death was an accident. Tatiana’s diagnosis is the first time a direct descendant has publicly linked their illness to systemic policy failure.

She graduated from Yale in 2012, earned a master’s from Oxford in 2014, and has worked as a science reporter for The New York Times since 2013. Her 2019 book, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have, explored hidden ecological costs of everyday life. Now, she’s exposed another hidden cost: the human toll of political indifference.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, where Prince William met Caroline Kennedy and Tatiana in 2022, stands as a monument to a presidency cut short. But Schlossberg’s essay asks us to look not backward—to the marble halls of history—but forward, to the hospital beds where real people are still fighting.