After big donor sought care from a Dana-Farber cancer doctor, things went awry

Day or night, Marc Cohen, a major donor to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, had a direct line to one of its leading oncologists. No question was too big or too small, and almost no hour was off limits for a consultation.

Cohen and his doctor, Kenneth C. Anderson, exchanged hundreds of emails and texts over two decades about Cohen’s disease, multiple myeloma, a rare and incurable blood cancer that is Anderson’s specialty. It was no problem for the physician to pause a Sunday morning walk with his wife to weigh in on test results, respond to a 5:50 a.m. email on a Saturday to suggest medication for insomnia-inducing leg pain or jump on the phone at short notice.

So after Cohen died in 2022 of complications from Covid-19 at a hospital near his suburban Washington, D.C., home, it came as a shock to his brother when, he said, a lawyer for Dana-Farber claimed Anderson was not Cohen’s doctor and never had been. Rather, he offered advice out of friendship.