News that Catherine, Princess of Wales, has been diagnosed with cancer set off a pointless argument. One side complained that the royal family had not been forthcoming with the truth behind her long hospitalization. The other held that Catherine has a right to privacy and is under no obligation to make her medical condition public.

Both points share the unfortunate assumption that there is shame and embarrassment in disclosing a cancer diagnosis when there shouldn’t be any. Why would that be? Had Catherine suffered a punctured lung from falling off a horse, one doubts the reason for her being in the hospital would have been kept secret.

In any case, wouldn’t Catherine be doing a service by showing that anyone can get cancer? Father-in-law Charles did.

Now, this is nothing against Catherine herself. Of all the royals, she is the most admirable — kind, dignified, lovely.

But back to the diagnosis. Every cancer is different. Most can be treated. In many cases, good care can extend life to the point where the patient dies of something else. And several cancers can be virtually cured.

It’s true that some cancers are linked to poor health habits: smoking to lung cancer, alcoholism to liver cancer. But people who do neither are also diagnosed with them.

“Cancer is something that can happen to anyone,” Kristie Redfield, a social worker at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said. “It’s an illness, not a failing.”

Shame and guilt associated with cancer comes from deep within the culture. “People might (also) hold certain beliefs about how the world works or how much control they have over their own lives,” Redfield notes. “They might think their cancer is a punishment or payback for something they did.”

As for online commentary, no one is in charge. There’s no stopping the stupidity, insults and lies. But the royals have a huge media platform on which to shape their stories. And they use it all the time.

Not coming out with some explanation for months after hospitalization can’t be explained, except as a means of hiding information deemed unseemly. Catherine had nothing to be embarrassed about.

The great advances in treatment notwithstanding, the word “cancer” remains scary. Wouldn’t Catherine be doing us all a service by using her royal microphone to calm some of the fears surrounding the diagnosis — and sweep away the shame too often wrongly attached to it?