Several days after Senator Edward M. Kennedy learned that he had a malignant brain tumor, he sought the advice of over a dozen national experts. Some flew to Boston, and others participated by telephone after receiving pertinent test results and medical records. For Kennedy this procedure was all too familiar. He had followed the same strategy when two of his children were diagnosed with cancer-a son with bone cancer who had part of a leg amputated and received an experimental form of chemotherapy; and a daughter with lung cancer which was successfully removed even though some specialists deemed it inoperable (Altman 2008).