Diseased, demented, depressed: serious illness in Heads of State When I met the Shah of Iran in Tehran in May 1977.1 He appeared to be at the height of his power: self-confident, and enjoying his global role in helping to determine world oil prices. It would have been a great help to have known then, and particularly a year later, that he had been suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. He had been diagnosed in April 1974 by the French haematologist Professor Jean Bernard, and eventually died from it in Cairo in July 1980. At that time, the Shah’s own physician, Dr Abdol Karim Ayadi, asked Dr Bernard and his assistant Dr. Georges Flandrin, not to tell the Shah he had cancer, which was then at Stage II and not requiring treatment. The Shah did not take chlorambucil until February 1975.