The Forgotten Story Of Rosemary Kennedy, Who Was Lobotomized So That JFK Could Succeed

ati ^ | 3/2/22 | Katie Serena

[DallasBiff]

After being lobotomized in 1941 at 23 years old, Rosemary Kennedy would spend the rest of her life institutionalized and isolated from her family.

[discostu]

I don’t really think it was so JFK could do anything. Sadly it’s just what families who could afford it did with mentally disabled kids at the time. Sweep them under the rug in an institution, excise as much literature about them as possible, and move on. Often times not even telling future generations of the family. Having a handicapped kid was a dark secret. Definitely something society has done better with. Not saying what they did was good, it sucked. But it really had nothing to do with Jack.

[nickcarraway]

thalidomide

Only in Europe and maybe elsewhere. Frances Kelsey, a Canadian woman who worked at the FDA, denied it's approval, so it was never used by the public in the U.S., but it was in Canada.

[plain talk]

“The headline is ridiculous. She was lobotomized, and it’s unfortunate, but largely they had no idea what they were doing back then.”

I agree. Journalism has been degraded for quite a while now on both left and right extremes of the political spectrum. Lots of agendas being pushed. More than ever one has to read many sources and think for oneself and look past the propaganda.

[Jonty30]

Joe might not have realized how bad it would be, but he knew what would happen, I believe, when you remove the frontal lobe from the brain.

Image was everything to him.

[DallasBiff]

As barbaric as that ad seems today, imagine how barbaric we will seem a hundred years from now when people see how we used to routinely mutilate the sex genitals of humans - even children - under the guise of “transgenderism”.

Call me crazy but in a 100 years, everybody will be a transgenered robot.

[nickcarraway]

So you don’t like people to whom image is everything?

[Jonty30]

Not when they are willing to effectively murder to keep an image, no.

[tet68]

None of us are mind-rinders, Set beebers to Rinder!!

[rexthecat]

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than have to get a frontal lobotomy"

[sauropod]

.

[Flaming Conservative]

I’ve always read she was a wild child. A doctor told Joe that lobotomizing her would calm her down. I reckon he decided to put a stop to her behavior. The boys could sow all the wild oats they could, but not his daughter! I also read Mrs. Kennedy would have nothing to do with him after that.

[Flaming Conservative]

A disabled drooling idiot is not much of an image improvement.

[Jonty30]

That’s why she was locked away and unknown for 20 years.

[Right_in_Virginia]

In November 1941, Joe Kennedy arranged to have a lobotomy performed on Rosemary. She had become "difficult" to handle and he was assured a lobotomy would "calm" her. It was immediately clear that the operation had drastically failed, though by Joe's expectations it was a complete success ----Rosemary had lost most of her ability to walk or talk.

She was an adult, 23 at the time, without an advocate --- not even her mother who wasn't told of the surgery until after it was completed.

Just another evil chapter from a family legacy filled with them.

[Right_in_Virginia]

[rktman]

I have some candidates in mind.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

Article is a side-slapper. I grew up near Boston. My family knew a lot more than we wanted to about the Boston Irish, and Joe Kennedy in particular. Joe’s father was a saloon-keeper with fingers deep in the liquor import trade, and a political lowlife. Joe himself didn’t actually drive the boats during Prohibition, but he received their cargoes with alacrity, and had close ties with the likes of Al Capone. But he made his real fortune by insider trading in the stock market, profiting hugely from the 1929 crash. In 1934 FDR inexplicably appointed him as the first Chairman of the new Securities and Exchange Commission, which was putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. Then he was posted as ambassador to the Court of St. James, during which time he vociferously advocated that the USA abandon Great Britain to Hitler. (Thankfully his hatred for Protestants was eventually ignored, and FDR was belatedly induced to sign the Lend-Lease act.)

“Boston businessman” indeed. Makes him sound like a grocer or a haberdasher.

[ronniesgal]

i thought they did it to quell her sexuality. whatever- it was a crapola move on her dad’s part.

[SauronOfMordor]

And our doctors sexually mutilate people to treat “gender dysphoria”.

[DiogenesLamp]

Is that ad really true?
God the doctors back then, were barbaric.

If you read up on the history of medicine, you will discover that it is has long been mostly quackery with a little bit of science mixed in. As time passed, more science got in, but there is still a lot of quackery in the mix, as in "masking" and "gene therapy" being called a "vaccine."