Tatiana Schlossberg Reveals Terminal Cancer Diagnosis, Criticizes RFK Jr. Over NIH Funding Cuts

On the 62nd anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Tatiana Schlossberg, a 35-year-old environmental journalist and granddaughter of the late president, published a raw, haunting essay in The New Yorker revealing she has terminal acute myeloid leukemia with a rare genetic mutation called Inversion 3. Diagnosed just ten minutes after giving birth to her second child in May 2024 at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, Schlossberg was told she had about a year to live — despite having swum a mile the day before, nine months pregnant, and feeling healthier than ever. "I didn’t feel sick," she wrote. "I was one of the healthiest people I knew."

A Diagnosis After Joy

The shock of her diagnosis came at the worst possible moment. Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy — former U.S. Ambassador to Australia and Japan — and Edwin Schlossberg, had just welcomed her baby girl. Within hours, doctors found her white blood cell count dangerously abnormal. She spent five weeks in the hospital before transferring to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for a bone-marrow transplant. Chemotherapy followed, then a second transplant. In January 2025, she joined a clinical trial for CAR-T-cell therapy, a cutting-edge immunotherapy developed over decades with billions in public funding. But the prognosis remained grim. "Alive for a year, maybe," her doctors told her.

Criticism Amid Personal Crisis

While undergoing treatment, Schlossberg watched her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rise to national power. Confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services in early 2025, Kennedy Jr. — once an independent presidential candidate — moved swiftly to reshape federal health priorities. Schlossberg details how his administration cut nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research and canceled hundreds of grants from the National Institutes of Health. "Hundreds of clinical trials vanished overnight," she wrote. "People who were counting on those studies — people like me — were left in the dark."

She didn’t mince words: "He was on the national stage, while I was in a hospital bed, waiting for my blood to stop killing me. And he was the one deciding who got help — and who didn’t."

A Family Legacy of Tragedy

Her essay, titled "A Battle with My Blood," is steeped in the Kennedy family’s history of loss. She published it on November 22 — the same day her grandfather was shot in Dallas in 1963. She recalls her mother, Caroline, just three years old when the world changed. Her uncle Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. Her uncle John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash in 1999. Her grandmother Jacqueline died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1994. Cancer, it seems, has always found the family.

"I’ve spent my whole life trying to be good," Schlossberg confessed. "To protect my mother. To never add to her pain. Now I’ve given her another tragedy. And I can’t undo it."

The Human Cost of Policy Decisions

Her story isn’t just personal — it’s a mirror held up to the consequences of political choices. When funding for NIH research is slashed, it’s not abstract numbers. It’s real people — like Schlossberg — whose only hope lies in trials that vanish before they can enroll. The CAR-T therapy she received, though experimental, was born from decades of taxpayer-funded science. Yet under Kennedy Jr.’s leadership, those same funds were redirected, delayed, or eliminated.

"I didn’t ask for a political statement," she wrote. "But when your life depends on science, and the person in charge is actively dismantling the system that could save you — that’s a kind of violence."

Family, Love, and the Fight to Survive

Despite the odds, Schlossberg has not been alone. Her parents, her brother Jack — who recently announced a run for Congress — and her sister have been by her side daily for over a year and a half. They’ve raised her two children, sat through countless hospital visits, and held her through moments of despair. Her husband, Dr. George Moran, a physician himself, has been her anchor. "They’re the reason I’m still here," she says.

Her mutation, Inversion 3, is rare and aggressive. Standard treatments won’t work. That’s why she needed the clinical trials — the very ones that were canceled. She’s now in hospice care, but still writing. Still speaking. Still fighting to make sure her voice isn’t lost.