Soon thereafter, Fred Li and I described a series of families, some of which were seen in the Clinical Center, who were prone to a wide variety of cancers, including sarcomas and breast cancer occurring in children and young adults. The prevailing dogma at the time was that familial cancer was site-specific, so the findings raised a lot of eyebrows. As a result, Fred and I spent more time debating the title than writing the text. But eventually Fred, being more conservative, won out and we placed a question mark after “familial syndrome”.