Just eight months into her treatment for a rare form of blood cancer, Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy and daughter of Caroline Kennedy, says the health care system on which she had come to rely on felt "strained, shaky."
The reason for her concern was the confirmation of her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary in February. In an essay in the New Yorker on Nov. 12, in which she revealed that she had less than a year to live, Schlossberg minced no words about the damage she believes Kennedy’s actions have and will inflict on cancer patients and on medical research.
"As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers," she wrote. "Slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest sponsor of medical research."
She wrote that doctors and scientists at Columbia University – where her husband worked as a urology resident and where (Columbia Presbyterian hospital) she was being initially treated – didn’t know if they would be able to continue their research, or even have jobs.
