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Kate, Princess of Wales, Says She Has Cancer and Is Undergoing Chemotherapy

Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales arrives at Westminster Abbey in central London on May 6, 2023, ahead of the coronations of Britain's King Charles III and Britain's Camilla, Queen Consort. Britain's Catherine announced cancer diagnosis on March 22, 2024. (AFP)
Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales arrives at Westminster Abbey in central London on May 6, 2023, ahead of the coronations of Britain's King Charles III and Britain's Camilla, Queen Consort. Britain's Catherine announced cancer diagnosis on March 22, 2024. (AFP)
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Kate, Princess of Wales, Says She Has Cancer and Is Undergoing Chemotherapy

Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales arrives at Westminster Abbey in central London on May 6, 2023, ahead of the coronations of Britain's King Charles III and Britain's Camilla, Queen Consort. Britain's Catherine announced cancer diagnosis on March 22, 2024. (AFP)
Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales arrives at Westminster Abbey in central London on May 6, 2023, ahead of the coronations of Britain's King Charles III and Britain's Camilla, Queen Consort. Britain's Catherine announced cancer diagnosis on March 22, 2024. (AFP)

Kate, the Princess of Wales, said Friday she has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.

The video announcement came after weeks of speculation spread on social media about her whereabouts and health since she was hospitalized in January for unspecified abdominal surgery.

Kate, 42, hadn’t been seen publicly since Christmas until video surfaced this week of her with her husband, Prince William, heir to the throne, walking from a farm shop near their Windsor home.

Kensington Palace had given little detail about Kate’s condition beyond saying it wasn’t cancer-related, the surgery was successful and recuperation would keep the princess away from public duties until April.

The news is another shock for the royal family since the announcement last month that King Charles III was being treated for an unspecified type of cancer that was caught while undergoing a procedure for a benign enlarged prostate.

Charles, 75, has withdrawn from public duties while he has cancer treatment, though he's appeared frequently in photos carrying on meetings with government officials and dignitaries and was even seen going to church.

Kate, on the other hand, had been out of view, leading to weeks of speculation and gossip. Attempts to put rumors to bed by releasing a photo of her on Mother's Day in the UK surrounded by her three smiling children backfired when The Associated Press and other news agencies retracted the image because it had been manipulated.

Kate issued a statement the next day acknowledging she liked to “experiment with editing” and apologizing for “any confusion” the photo had caused. But that did little to quell the speculation.

Even the footage published by The Sun and TMZ that appeared to show Kate and William shopping sparked a new flurry of rumor-mongering, with some armchair sleuths refusing to believe the video showed Kate at all.

Earlier this week, a British privacy watchdog said it was investigating a report that staff at the private London hospital where she was treated tried to snoop on her medical records while she was a patient for abdominal surgery.

The former Kate Middleton, who married William in a fairy-tale wedding in 2011, has boosted the popularity and appeal of the British monarchy worldwide more than any royal since Princess Diana.

The princess is the oldest of three children brought up in a well-to-do neighborhood in Berkshire, west of London. The Middletons have no aristocratic background, and the British press often referred to Kate as a “commoner” marrying into royalty.

Kate attended the private girls’ school Marlborough College and then University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she met William around 2001. Friends and housemates at first, their relationship came to be in the public eye when they were pictured together on a skiing holiday in Switzerland in 2004.

Kate graduated in 2005 with a degree in art history and a budding relationship with the prince.

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Obesity Won’t Be Solely Defined by BMI under New Plan for Diagnosis by Global Experts

A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
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Obesity Won’t Be Solely Defined by BMI under New Plan for Diagnosis by Global Experts

A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)

A group of global experts is proposing a new way to define and diagnose obesity, reducing the emphasis on the controversial body mass index and hoping to better identify people who need treatment for the disease caused by excess body fat.

Under recommendations released Tuesday night, obesity would no longer be defined solely by BMI, a calculation of height and weight, but combined with other measurements, such as waist circumference, plus evidence of health problems tied to extra pounds.

Obesity is estimated to affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. In the US, about 40% of adults have obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The whole goal of this is to get a more precise definition so that we are targeting the people who actually need the help most," said Dr. David Cummings, an obesity expert at the University of Washington and one of the 58 authors of the report published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

The report introduces two new diagnostic categories: clinical obesity and pre-clinical obesity.

People with clinical obesity meet BMI and other markers of obesity and have evidence of organ, tissue or other problems caused by excess weight. That could include heart disease, high blood pressure, liver or kidney disease or chronic severe knee or hip pain. These people would be eligible for treatments, including diet and exercise interventions and obesity medications.

People with pre-clinical obesity are at risk for those conditions, but have no ongoing illness, the report says.

BMI has long been considered a flawed measure that can over-diagnose or underdiagnose obesity, which is currently defined as a BMI of 30 or more. But people with excess body fat do not always have a BMI above 30, the report notes. And people with high muscle mass — football players or other athletes — may have a high BMI despite normal fat mass.

Under the new criteria, about 20% of people who used to be classified as obese would no longer meet the definition, preliminary analysis suggests. And about 20% of people with serious health effects but lower BMI would now be considered clinically obese, experts said.

"It wouldn't dramatically change the percentage of people being defined as having obesity, but it would better diagnose the people who really have clinically significant excess fat," Cummings said.

The new definitions have been endorsed by more than 75 medical organizations around the world, but it's not clear how widely or quickly they could be adopted in practice. The report acknowledges that implementation of the recommendations "will carry significant costs and workforce implications."

A spokesman for the health insurance trade group AHIP, formerly known as America's Health Insurance Plans, said "it's too early at this point to gauge how plans will incorporate these criteria into coverage or other policies."

There are practical issues to consider, said Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of the obesity treatment company FlyteHealth. Measuring waist circumference sounds simple, but protocols differ, many doctors aren't trained accurately and standard medical tape measures aren't big enough for many people with obesity.

In addition, determining the difference between clinical and pre-clinical obesity would require a comprehensive health assessment and lab tests, she noted.

"For a new classification system to be widely adopted, it would also need to be extremely quick, inexpensive, and reliable," she said.

The new definitions are likely to be confusing, said Kate Bauer, a nutrition expert at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

"The public likes and needs simple messages. I don't think this differentiation is going to change anything," she said.

Overhauling the definition of obesity will take time, acknowledged Dr. Robert Kushner, an obesity expert at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and a co-author of the report.

"This is the first step in the process," he said. "I think it's going to begin the conversation."