Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, launched a scathing attack on her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as she was dying from cancer.
Schlossberg died on Tuesday from acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 35.
The daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg is survived by her husband, George Moran, and their one-year-old daughter and three-year-old son.
Revealing her terminal diagnosis in November, Schlossberg described RFK Jr. as an “embarrassment” to her family.
She also wrote how her cousin’s massive cuts in research left her shaken and worried as she battled the disease.
Writing in The New Yorker, the environmental journalist said she was undergoing critical clinical trials while Kennedy was being nominated and confirmed as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
She said her mother wrote to the Senate appealing for the nomination to be rejected, and her brother, Jack—who is running for Congress in New York—had been “speaking out against his lies for months.”
“I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government,” she wrote.
“Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky,” she added.
Schlossberg said scientists and doctors at Columbia, including her husband, were worried they would lose their jobs and have their research blocked. She worried that if her husband had to change jobs, she wouldn’t be able to get insured again because she had a pre-existing condition.
“Bobby is a known skeptic of vaccines, and I was especially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get mine again, leaving me to spend the rest of my life immunocompromised, along with millions of cancer survivors, small children, and the elderly,” she continued.
“Bobby has said, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” Bobby probably doesn’t remember the millions of people who were paralyzed or killed by polio before the vaccine was available.”
She said that while receiving medical care, she watched helplessly as RFK Jr. slashed nearly half a billion dollars from research into vaccines and cut billions more in funding for the National Institutes of Health.
“I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission,” wrote Schlossberg.
She said that she suffered a postpartum hemorrhage early in her illness and was given a dose of misoprostol to help stop the bleeding and save her life.
“This drug is part of medication abortion, which, at Bobby’s urging, is currently “under review” by the Food and Drug Administration,” she wrote in The New Yorker. “I freeze when I think about what would have happened if it had not been immediately available to me and to millions of other women who need it to save their lives or to get the care they deserve.”
RFK Jr. has not commented on the article. The Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
“She will always be in our hearts,” her family said in a statement after announcing her passing.
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