Dr. De Bakey was first going to make a surgery on the Shah in Panama, but that never happened. This was because the national pride of the Panamanian doctors would not accept that American doctors (De Bakey and his team) in Panama would make the surgery, and not the Panamanian doctors.
It was after that the American ambassador in Panama – Embler Mas – came into the picture that the American and Panamanian doctors made up and were able to continue their work. But even though they were all ready to start the surgery on the Shah, which already had been delayed in such a critical time, the doctors waited two more weeks to start the surgery. It is very important to mention that it was in these two weeks, that the Islamic Republic through Sadegh Ghotbzadeh had a dialogue with thePanamanian and theAmerican authorities about them giving the Shah to the Islamic Republic.

One of the doctors in De Bakey’s team was the famous cancer specialist Dr. Jean Hester. While De Bakey was a cardiologist and had nothing at all to do there, Dr. Hester on the other hand was the right person to make surgeries on the Shah and take care of him. That was something, which many believed, even the doctors in De Bakey’s team. That is why Dr. De Bakey "fired" her from the team, when he flew to Egypt with his team to make a surgery on the Shah there.

While in Panama, Dr. Hester was totally unaware about that the surgery was furthermore delayed, so she was still working with the blood of the Shah. When she visited the Shah to tell him what she was going to do in the surgery, she was shocked by getting to know that the surgery was delayed. The Shah had felt the danger and asked Dr. Hester: “Dr. Hester, don’t you think it is very dangerous to further delay this surgery when we can see that my white blood cells are not at a normal level?”.

Dr. Hester was the opposite of Dr. De Bakey and his faithful colleague Dr. Keane. She meant that it was wrong that the life of the Shah was placed in only one person’s hand, and that, Dr. De Bakey. She meant that several commissions should be made so that they could keep a check on how the Shah was treated by the doctors.
Dr. Hester was so frustrated by the way Dr. De Bakey and Dr. Benjamin Keane were treating the Shah, that she wrote a letter to the president of Panama – Omar Torrijos – saying:
“It is a shame that the atmosphere, which Dr. Benjamin Keane has created, and the unprofessional way he acts on, has totally made that a normal procedure for an ill person like the Shah, has been forgotten”.
The same day, Dr. Hester went back to USA and visited Hamilton Jordan, at that time the spokesman of the White house, to tell him how badly and inhuman the Shah was being treated.

In a private letter from April 4th 1980, she wrote:
“... with my visit with Hamilton Jordan, I wanted at least one of our government persons to know that there were many doctors not being agree with De Bakey and Keane. The fact that a cardiologist (Dr. De Bakey) and a honorary professor in warm diseases (Dr. Keane) got the responsibility for a cancer sick person like the Shah, had never happened in the American medical history.”