and we are following breaking news Kate Middleton has revealed she has been diagnosed with cancer the Princess of Wales made the announcement this afternoon she says she is undergoing a course of preventative chemotherapy and that she is in the early stages of treatment Princess Kate's last official public appearance was on Christmas day of last year in the three months since she has been out of the public eye for the most part some have questioned her whereabouts and uh others have even come up
with conspiracy theories about what was taking place let's turn now to our CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie Daga following all of this uh from our London Bureau and Charlie let me start off by asking you first of all uh how remarkable was this kind of disclosure a pre-recorded message uh that was released some two minutes or so in length um give us a sense of the context what led up to this and I understand uh let's go first I'm being told we do have a portion of that video to play
for our viewers let's listen to that we'll talk on the other side I want to take this opportunity to say thank you personally for all the wonderful messages of support and for your understanding whilst I've been recovering from surgery it has been an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family but I've had a fantastic medical team who have taken great care of me for which I'm so grateful in January I underwent major abdominal surgery in London and at the time it was thought that my
condition was non-cancerous the surgery was successful however tests after the operation found cancer had been present my medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy and I'm now in the early stages of that treatment this of course came as a huge shock and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family as you can imagine this has taken time it has taken me time to recover from maj
or surgery in order to start my treatment but most importantly it has taken us time to explain everything to George Charlotte and Louie in a way that's appropriate for them and to reassure them that I'm going to be okay as I've said to them I am well and getting stronger every day by focusing on the things that will help me heal in my mind body and Spirits having William by my side is a great source of comfort and reassurance too as is the love support and kindness that has been shown by so many
of you it means so much to us both we hope that you'll understand that as a family we now need some time space and privacy while I complete my treatment my work has always brought me a deep sense of joy and I look forward to being back when I made a but for now I must focus on making a full recovery at this time I'm also thinking of all those whose lives have been affected by cancer for everyone facing this disease in whatever form please do not lose Faith or hope you are not alone a remarkable
statement there from Catherine the princess of whales so Charlie give us a sense of the context what led up uh to this how much notice did we have that this kind of pre-recorded message was coming honestly it was less than an hour's notice 15 minutes notice essentially uh we got word from the palace this that this address was going to take place is 2 minutes and 15 seconds long it was actually recorded a couple of days ago now in terms of the timing the timing is now because it's just before yo
u know the 6:00 news here that's their Flagship program and so that was as far as the timing for releasing it for British media um we did speak to the Palace they gave us some further information uh as you heard Princess of Wales underwent major abdominal surgery that was in January surgery successful at the time the condition was not cancerous no test confirmed the presence of cancer however it was in the post-operative test subsequently found uh that cancer had been present now she's on a reco
very pathway that's the way they described it and she's having preventative chemotherapy again I'm quoting them directly here uh she's a good Spirits uh she's focused on her recovery she's hugely grateful for the medical team for the care they're providing she wants space and privacy to uh complete her treatment make a a full recovery so we don't know which cancer we don't know when it was diagnosed we don't even know really when treatment began and the palace has told us essentially not to ask
as far as releasing the information today uh Palace said they wanted to wait until Easter break and that is today now that's when the kids here are out of school because they wanted to have time to reassure the children that Kate's going to be okay uh they're asking us uh the media especially the British media to refrain from chasing up um more details about her medical condition because that has been going on the past few days and to restrain from speculation uh as far as when she may return to
duty it's when her doctors give her the go-ahead but even if she attends sort of events like going to church that doesn't necessarily indicate that she's about to begin uh a new role after this treatment all right Charlie if you'll stay with us for just a moment I want to bring in CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams um we're lucky to have you here on set with us Holly uh you know there is a portion of this statement at the very end where she asks for privacy and I wonder if you
can give us a sense of what that expectation of privacy is uh for the Royals there had been so many questions swirling as you had talked about a moment ago there had been questions about what the real Fuller picture of her health was what kind of privacy can the Royals really expect it's a really interesting question and I think it's there's kind of a debate there isn't there because she is a public figure she is um you know she's so famous she's in the Public Public eye the whole time the Roya
ls see themselves as public servants the British taxpayer helps pay for the role that they play um in British Society but on the other hand this is we understand actually quite a shy woman a woman who didn't grow up thinking that she wanted to be a celebrity didn't think that she wanted to be famous she's in this role courtesy of the man she apparently fell in love with at University um and and then married and so many people um would argue that she has a huge right to privacy actually watching
this Elaine and I think she I think she looks very thin and very pale and and quite shaken actually I was just really casting my mind back over the last few weeks all of these rumors all of these conspiracy theories about her health about whether she was still alive about her private life the controversy and criticism over that photograph that the palace released to Mark Mother's Day that was an apparent attempt to show she is still alive um she's okay and look I've said this on air before today
that I think what has been lost in all of this a little bit is that this is a human being this is a woman this is a mother a young mother and I thought that and I think you were just touching on this just now some of the things she said were really touching and moving she said this was a huge shock she said that she and William uh were trying to process and manage this privately for the sake of their young family she talked about wanting to explain it to her three young children first before ex
plaining it to the public and we actually understand that the timing of this was very much linked to the fact that today Begins the Easter holiday for most school children in Britain so they apparently wanted their children to be out of school you know away from their friends from contact with other people before they made this this really upsetting news public um so let's go back to Charlie um if you can tell us Charlie do we have a sense of where Catherine is being treated what details do we h
ave on that no I can tell you that we don't have those details the palace right before this briefing right before that statement they they were very clear um that they wouldn't be sharing any more details they wouldn't give a timeline for when if there was going to be information when that information would come out um as far as her official duties the princess will return to official duties when she's cleared to do so by her medical team she's in good spirits Etc focused on aold recovery but th
ey've been very very explicit and they not only sent that out that they won't be sharing those details as far as what it is when it happened how how the treatment is going um they've been very specific about urging media we could probably guess that that's British media from trying to find out more in terms of her medical records and trying to say look restrain from speculation I that hasn't seemed to help in the past we'll see what's going to happen in the future considering there will be this
outpouring of compassion and emotion as they have been chasing as Holly said you know they've been chasing this story and chasing Kate for weeks and months and now we realize what that family has been going through absolutely right Charlie Daga thank you uh let's turn to our Dr John lauk here with us now in studio 57 he of course is our CBS News chief medical correspondent uh Dr lauk thanks very much for being with us so there is a lot as Charlie said that we do not know um but I want to focus i
n on sort of the basics of what was outlined in her statement and a very basic question uh something you were talking about with Nora odonnell on the special report a moment ago um when we talk about major abdominal surgery what exactly does the abdomen consist of because people might think that it is confined to sort of one area but in your conversation with her you you note it is a whole host of right organs essentially right within this you know sack you know that that the parum and even behi
nd it or in front of it there are lots of organs you know so from top to bottom you know mouth esophagus and then you into the abdomen with the stomach people say my I have a stomach ache they generally mean their abdomen hurts right but the stomach is that little sack that's sort of where the food mixes then 20 30 feet of small intestine four to five feet of colon and then and then you're done with with the intestinal tract but then there is the liver up here in the right upper quadrant there's
a spleen in the left upper quadrant there is a pancreas sort of in behind that perum that that that abdominal cavity uh there are all the gynecologic um organs so you have the uterus you have the ovaries you also have the bladder down there um so there are and then so there's there's a lot of different things so when you hear the phrase that was used major abdominal surgery that could mean any number of things to you as a gastroenterologist you know as a gastroenterologist I guess if if you're
a hammer the world's a nail right so when they said something that's going to take 3 months for Recovery um I I did as a GI I thought well maybe there's something going on with the with the uh small intestine or large intestine because that's the kind of surgery where if you do an operation on that it can really take a long time for it to heal up um the other types of of surgeries that people do you know they can be done laparoscopically the the recovery tends to be uh quicker but you know you r
eally don't know I mean right now when they say she has cancer um it's it's here's my own personal view about it um it's sort of like doing this right you're giving a mixed signal you know stop but let me tell you what's going on and when you give this partial information and you say it's cancer cancer is a big word which is terrifying for people but as an internist and gastroenterologist I've seen so many people get cured of cancer there are millions and millions of people cured of cancer and t
he earlier you diagnose cancer in general the better the prognosis and the thing that was encouraging to me about this was they were surprised you would say well that's not a good thing actually to me you don't want her to have had cancer but if she was going to have cancer they didn't see it beforehand in the scans that they did they must have done CAT scans or other scans so they were surprised they went in there they didn't see it during the operation so you're looking right at things in the
abdom they didn't see it then and I'm guessing CU they said when they looked at you know and it sounds like they did a they had a specimen that they examined the pathology showed some cancer cells that's like that was surprising for them as a gastroenterologist I can come up with various things that happen operations she had I really don't want to go down that path because that is speculating but I can just say that the earlier the better and the fact that they're saying we want to have um preve
ntive chemotherapy which is also called Adent chemotherapy so that that was going to be my question because I think some folks may be a confused about what that means the idea of preventative chemotherapy when people hear that term it might seem like a bit of an oxymoron because don't you only provide chemotherapy for those who have in fact already uh come through with this diagnosis of cancer I mean isn't it sort of a bit of an oxymoron I think it's a confusing word because you're you know we t
hink about preventative things so where you do a colonoscopy you take out a benign pup you prevent the person from getting cancer in this case what you're preventing is if there are some microscopic small small cells that are already there and they're somewhere you're preventing them from growing bigger and coming into clumps and causing a problem and traveling around the body and becoming metastases right so you're giving this chemotherapy which tends to you know can affect uh the division of c
ells and it actually can work lots of different ways uh and you're trying to knock out these little cells before they have a chance to seed to go places and to quietly and insidiously grow um I want to turn to you Holly because in speaking with Dr leuk you know it occurs to me the amount of work that must have gone into crafting this statement because a term like cancer as you say is a seismic shock to anyone that hears that and they obviously were quite aware of the kind of reaction not only th
e media but the British public would have hearing that can you talk a bit about what we do know or don't know about more generally how it is that decisions are made in disclosing this kind of information because as we said a moment ago it is a very fine line here in her role as a public official people want to know people have genuine care and concern um and on the other end of it as you said there are also conspiracy theorists which uh then go off and provide you know disinformation misinformat
ion um what do we know generally about how these kinds of decisions are made about details to be released such a good question and I wish I had more to tell you because the palace tends to be a little bit of a black box I mean I can say that for instance when the late queen was old and very frail and there were fears for her health there were certainly rumors um that we were hearing about what might be ailing her but there were no questions being asked about that publicly it was almost as if the
public didn't really want to know and the British media didn't really want to report that and so and we never learned actually you know what what what was ailing her um officially it was quite usual when King Charles revealed recently that that he is suffering from cancer kind of stunning for some people to have that level detail right and he apparently did that kind of as a as a public service because he thought he should share that with people but again didn't say where the say but didn't say
it was I mean there is an expectation of privacy I think that I suspect the palace probably thinks there's a different bar for the Princess of Wales for Kate because she is not part of the line of succession Charles is the king Williams is the William is the air of the throne she's not they may very well think that there's a there's a lower bar for her that she has a a a greater um expectation of privacy when it comes to the the kind of media operation around the Royals I think a lot of America
ns would actually be really surprised because I think that the per well after all this is the country that kind of invented modern PR right like you guys do it better than anyone else and I think that that many Americans think that there's this incredibly kind of big media machine around the Royals you know I've spoken to people whove worked in Communications for the Royals and there really isn't it's quite it's quite a a small team of people and we see that they sometimes make mistakes for inst
ance the photograph that was recently released on on Mother's Day that had been you know manipulated somewhat and then apparently unknowingly released to the press and and then causing an embarrassment yeah it's it's very complicated right because you have the the right to privacy on the other hand you're saying she has cancer and that to the world is like cancer who and people may lump it all together in this terrifying thing and it may be that giving more details and context here actually lowe
rs the flame right that was going to be my question lowers the flame because it may be that she had an incidentally found early early cancer she's going to get three months of adant chemotherapy and that should be it she should she'll be knocked out for the three months but she relatively but then she's going to return to normal and and then people will put percentages to it and say wow she she has an excellent chance of doing well and move on so I hear you but here's another another thing that
that Americans may not factor in when they think about the royal family I was speaking to someone who used to be a spokesman for the king and queen recently just a few days ago and he was really drawing a distinction between members of the royal family and Hollywood celebrities and he was saying the whole point OFW C is that they are selling themselves right the anything they do is about burnishing their image and he was saying the important thing to remember about Royals is that they're not the
re for their own celebrities or for their own image they are there for the insti and for that reason they believe they have more of a right to privacy right if you two will will stand by just for a moment I want to turn to Charlie now because this is a a good place to ask you Charlie about sort of the appetite for information uh Charlie if you're with us still um you know as Holly points out it is not an Apples to Apples comparison uh when you talk about for instance the the Hollywood celebritie
s that Holly's mentioning and then the Royals who who have obviously clearly very different roles in our our respective societies but in terms of just the Public's uh desire for information there can you give us a sense of what that's like uh what is that appetite for information about the Royals like it it has been Relentless voracious and it's been that way for a few months and it's been building up so let me remind you of that timeline so Kensington Palace confirmed the Princess of Wales left
Hospital on Jan AR 29th now two months ago uh according to this uh she began treatment late February uh the prince the prince of Wales had to pull out of a memorial service for his Godfather on the 27th then came that photoshopped photo and they had to explain that they had to apologize the princess apologized herself for it so in the meantime there's been this buildup of where's Kate what's going on with Kate is Kate okay we knew she had major abdominal surgery and it's it's it's a curiosity u
h the uh social media hasn't helped at all because as Holly said you know the number of conspiracy theories that we've seen about this and it may just be of course they wanted to deal with it on their own especially when it comes to their children which they want to be very protective of and William very protective of Kate but it might stand to reason that the the demand to know what's going on may have forced them to say look we finally have to come clean with this it wouldn't have been an easy
decision to make and you saw uncomfortable she looked doing it um yeah it's a tough thing you know this is a family at heart and but the the British expectations the tabloids in particular nearly every single day they've been going after it was this a sighting of Kate and why isn't she making a public appearance what is the palace trying to hide so this is the kind of demand for information and yes they are public figures but there it's also a private family dealing with as John leuk said you k
now the big CA and that's that's a tough one yeah and and let me ask you Dr leuk uh you know on that point um it is impossible to imagine I think for most people what that white hot Spotlight of attention must feel like at any given time where Charlie is talking about one's every move is being sort of scrutinized the absence of your of of you being out in the public is something that is very much noticed can you just talk uh from your own experience treating patients who have been diagnosed and
their families the emotional impact that that can have because uh as Charlie was saying as Holly was saying you know this is a wife this is a mother in addition to being Katherine the Princess of Wales uh she is a person who must be dealing with the tremendous personal emotional weight of not only her title but then her role in her own right I'm not surprised that Holly with her enormous emotional intelligence and compassion pointed out first that she is a human being this is a human being she i
s a mother she is a person so yes the public wants to know this maybe it's a teaching moment we'd like more details uh the doctor and me the optimistic doctor and me thinks wow it was found early if we knew a little more maybe people would feel better if we could explain exactly how it happened what was that initial surgery and all of those details but then there's the person she's a human being and you you think about the word empathy here right because what I see with patients who go through a
nything it could be by the way open heart surgery it could be major abdominal surgery it could be suddenly finding out they have cancer that you're in that fight-flight mode at the beginning your adrenaline's going your cortisol is going you got to do this that and the other thing and then you're sort of on a better path and things may may be you may be recovering and then literally I've had patients 2:00 in the morning bolt up in the bed in a cold sweat weeks or months later and be surprised by
the thought of oh my gosh that happened you know that was a bullet that just went by my head even if you if if it turned out fine and then we all know that there's mortality we all know that someday we're going to die but there is that little thought maybe just maybe I am the first person who's not going to die there's you know especially younger people think that so that first brush with mortality if that's what this is um I don't know what happened to her in a life before that but that can be
very destabilizing and I think I would love for I would if I could have a wish I'd love for everybody to back off give her her privacy let her recover there's going to be a medical surgical recovery recovery from the surgery and the wounds there but there's going to be a longer psychological recovery and that's going to be very difficult to do Under the bright lights um Holly I'm curious about uh obviously as this news begins to sort of permeate right because it is now evening uh in London um w
hat would we expect to see in terms of other potential disclosures of information now that we have had some kind of you know very um in some ways specific but in some ways leaves other questions unanswered um statement is there potentially um you know followup any kind of other I mean do we have a sense I suppose this is Uncharted Territory it's really interesting point though Ela I mean as you know as I think we all know the British royal family has this strange fractious uh relationship with t
he media but in particular the Tabloid media the kind of powerful tabloid newspapers in the UK and on the one hand the royal family kind of needs the newspapers because it's is saying that you know you have to be seen to be believed if you're the royal family they kind of need that to stay relevant um but on the other hand the newspapers sell papers get clicks online with royal coverage but they can choose whether it's positive coverage or negative coverage I mean one person who can tell you a l
ot about that is Megan marle who suffered the negative coverage right so on the one hand I think that the British media is going to be searching for any details that they can get about this and people you know the public in Britain wants more details but on the other hand they are dealing with an immensely popular person here person who you know only joined the royal family in recent years she's married into the royal family but she is really loved and I think people's hearts have gone out to he
r in the UK I think I think my sense is that there's been less of the kind of rumors and conspiracy theories coming from the UK and more just sympathy for her position so if the media chases those details too hard or reveals things that are considered private um I think that they run the risk of really you know angering the British public I do think that if it's limited chemotherapy Aden chemotherapy for several months you know I said for example for colon cancer it's about three months you know
people can feel lousy during that they afterwards they tend to recover so I think time will tell we should be we're about was the end of February when they started so we're already at the end of March got another couple of months maybe maybe it'll end it in in I don't know but in three months uh in a total of three months and then she should recover quickly and appearances are important in the world right she'll start to have more color she'll gain some weight she'll look better to everybody an
d then hopefully people will move on and she'll do well all of this Charlie uh if you're still with us is happening at a time as the royal family uh is also uh it's basically coming on the heels of the news of King Charles and his his own cancer remind us about that and the disclosure that happened at that time because when that happened uh I think a lot of folks were genuinely surprised at the level of detail provided then about the king share with you speaking of King Charles this came from Bu
ckingham Palace Bucking Palace spokesman saying his majesty King Charles is so proud of Katherine for her courage in speaking as she did following their time in hospital uh his majesty remained in closest contact with his beloved daughter-in-law throughout the past weeks both their majesties will continue to offer their love and support to the whole family through this difficult time so the king and queen the first message that we got from Buckingham Palace about that but as you said yes King Ch
arles has been dealing with his own uh cancer diagnosis and treatment and when we heard that in fact I was working that night when we broke the news it was shocking enough not only that something like that was taking place the announcement itself but the way it was going to be shared you know in the past even W with um his mother they would have been reluctant to share those sort of medical details and something that would shock the world as Dr leuk said when you use the word cancer it's a shock
ing thing to say so we had King Charles say it we were surprised that uh he had come out and not given so much sort of granular detail again as far as what kind of cancer what the treatment was how long it's going to take and then to see Kate do the same thing so yeah this the family's going through a tough time very difficult time well I want to say thank you Charlie Daga Holly Williams Dr John lauk thank you all so much for sharing your reporting and your Insight with us
Comments