New Delhi, July 17 -- pneumonia.

"Sam passed away from pneumonia," Grenz wrote in a statement to CBS News. "Prior to becoming sick, Sam had valiantly fought and beaten lymphoma through a new treatment called CAR-T therapy." The statement was issued, Grenz added, to address news reports "which contain inaccuracies and outright falsehoods." He did not specify which reports he was correcting, or what precisely had been published as false.

Neill was 78 and, by his own account and that of his medical team, cancer-free when pneumonia struck. That sequence - surviving a rare and aggressive blood cancer through an experimental treatment, only to die of something entirely separate - was not what anyone could have predicted from the spring of 202...