Some of the top supporters of McCain, who has survived a plane crash, torture as POW in Vietnam and more recently Melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, plan to convene a meeting of the doctors next month to answer questions about his health but the physicians are expected to say he is fit to lead the only superpower, a media report said.

McCain had himself acknowledged last week that some of voters may want extra insurance when it comes to electing a septuagenarian most notably the choice of vice president, The News daily noted.

His aides said like many men his age, his medicines are limited to baby aspirin (to prevent heart attacks), Vytorin for cholesterol (now pegged at a respectable 155) and the occasional Claritin for allergies.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found that 27 per cent of likely voters said McCain's age makes them "less enthusiastic" about his candidacy for the November election.

But his spokesman Tucker Bounds told the paper that it only takes one day on the road with John McCain to know that what doctors say about his health is absolutely true.

Sill, the fact that McCain has chosen to make available his doctors next month underscores how much higher the medical bar is for him than his relatively youthful Democratic opponents, the 60-year-old Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, 46, the paper noted.

"McCain's age will be made an issue by folks from the Democrats to late-night comics," the paper quoted Scott Reed, a Republican Party consultant as saying.

Reed said McCain can overcome questions by staying positive and fit but added, "Besides his campaign manager, the most important person on McCain's staff may prove to be his personal physician, whose job is to keep him healthy."

Physically, the report says, McCain's body has withstood a degree of trauma unimaginable to most people. As a Navy pilot, he shattered bones in both arms and severely injured his knee when his fighter went down near Hanoi in 1967. His captors never set his bones properly, then tortured him over five years, fracturing both shoulders and his ribs.

The legacy of that pain can be seen today in McCain's slight limp. He cannot raise either arm over his head, and like many his age, he suffers bouts of arthritis.

The scar on his left cheek is a reminder of the dime-sized melanoma that doctors removed in 2000.