Dr. Michael De Bakey is a famous American surgeon who made the worlds first surgery with an artificial heart. It is now 12 years (2004) that Dr. De Bakey no longer answers any phones or letters about the Shahs surgery or his illness or why a famous cardiologist had been the doctor of the Shah who had problems with cancer.
Today, Dr. De Bakey is 95 years old (he was 87 when this reportage was written). He was as old as 71 years old when he did surgery on the Shah. At that time Dr. De Bakey had a young wife and a newborn baby.

In April 1979, the “Texas Monthly” wrote about Dr. De Bakey’s egoistic personality. The “Texas Monthly” wrote: “Once, De Bakey came into the surgery room with white Texas boots. While all of the other doctors were dressed in green surgery clothes, De Bakey still had his cowboy coat on”.

Dr. De Bakey is known as a world famous cardiologist, but there aren’t many who know that he also is one of the most important and influential members of the democrat party of USA. While Lyndon B. Johnson was the president of the USA, Dr. De Bakey were chosen to be the chief of the “heart and cancer illness committee”, connected to the presidency office. Dr. De Bakey was also the person who represented the Johnson government in the briefings of the congress.

To be able to see how powerful De Bakey is and how influential he was, and still is, it is important to know that he was the chief of a medical centre in Texas. This centre had in the late 70:s become a major “power” both in the world of medicine and also the world of politics. The centre had a budget on 552 million dollars and equipments worth 600 million dollars.

As a matter of fact, Dr. De Bakey is so powerful that one of his colleagues said to the British journalist, William Shokras, that: “ De Bakey is a powerful man, and I don’t want to criticize him openly...”.