Patrick Bouvier Kennedy - Biography

Biography

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born by emergency caesarean section five and a half weeks early at the Otis Air Force Base Hospital in Bourne, Massachusetts. His birth weight of 4 pounds 10+1⁄₂ ounces (2.11 kg) medically classified him as premature. Right after his birth, he was transferred to Boston Children's Hospital where he died two days later of hyaline membrane disease. His obituary in The New York Times stated that, at that time, all that could be done for a victim of hyaline membrane disease "is to monitor the infant's blood chemistry and to try to keep it near normal levels."

The infant's death from hyaline membrane disease, now more commonly called respiratory distress syndrome, helped spark new public awareness of the disease and further research. As of 2004, the disease has an overall mortality of less than 15%—and is much less fatal among mildly to moderately premature infants, such as with the Kennedys' infant son. Also, treatment modalities are now widely available in developed countries, such as continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), pulmonary surfactant replacement, and improved respirator technology, that either did not exist or were unavailable in 1963.

A funeral mass was held on August 10, 1963, in the private chapel of Cardinal Richard Cushing in Boston. The child was initially buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. His body and that of a stillborn sister, Arabella, were re-interred on December 5, 1963, alongside their father at Arlington National Cemetery, and later again moved to their permanent graves in Section 45, Grid U-35.