Rosemary Kennedy

Overview[]

Rosemary Kennedy, the younger sister of John F. Kennedy, was lobotomized at the age of 23 in 1941.

History[]

Birth[]

A medical blunder during birth cut oxygen supplies to her brain, damaging it severally. Only here mother Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, sister Eunice and brother JFK wanted to help her. She had a IQ of 60 to 70, had epalepcy, had a mental age of 8 to 12, was a scholastic failure, had a rebellious attitude and behave recklessly.

The pre-frontal lobotomy[]

In a act of self interest and anti-disability motivated spite, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. ordered that she be lobotomized, apparently with the plan to make her either a vegetable or a zombie in 1941.

Once they found out what it was like living with a incontinent and wheelchairbound vegetable who had the mental age of 2, they disowned her and dumped her in an mental asylum. Eunice did viset on the odd occasion.

Lobotomies are inherently risky and were even more so back then, since most patents became either zombies or vegetables even when the doctors did not want to do that to them!

Aftermath[]

By 1969, Rosemary had learned to walk again with a limp, could not speak clearly and one of her arms was paralised by a palsied. Her mental age had go up to 2 1/2 - 3. She also had a pet dog and cat.

Rosemary's mental destruction may have inspired her sister, Eunice, to initiate the Special Olympics for mentally handicapped people during 1962.

Death[]

Rosemary Kennedy died on January 7, 2005, in her Wisconsin care home of natural causes, aged 86. Her sisters Jean, Eunice, and Patricia, and brother Ted were with her at the time. She is berried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Also see[]

JFK
Bobby Kennedy
Biographies
American cold war mental healthcare abuse