Opinion: What the public might learn from Kate Middleton, the latest ‘famous patient’
There was a time when the last thing a celebrity would do would be to go public with details of a major illness. After all, it’s hard enough dealing with a grave diagnosis and often complicated treatments than to also announce them to the world. And health information has always been treated as confidential, shared between patients and their doctors.
But things began to change in the early 20th century. By the time I wrote my book, “When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine” in 2006, there were hundreds of stories of famous patients I could have told. The latest entry is that of Catherine, the Princess of Wales, also known as Kate Middleton, who revealed she has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. As with her many of her predecessors, the princess’s story will likely both reveal and conceal, but I suspect it will ultimately both move and enlighten the public.
