Vanessa Gamble, MD, PhD

Dr. Gamble, a fourth-generation West Philadelphian, describes her family, community, and early education, including the impact of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. when she was 15. After graduating from Philadelphia Girls’ High School, she describes her education at Hampshire College where she wrote her senior thesis on the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study. Dr. Gamble recounts her introduction to bioethics as an undergraduate intern at The Hastings Center and her subsequent medical school and graduate student experiences at the University of Pennsylvania where she earned an MD-PhD. She recalls essential mentors, particularly Dr. Helen Dickens, when she lost both her mother and sister to cancer. During her tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she recounts her leadership role in securing a presidential apology for the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, delivered by President Bill Clinton in 1997, which included federal funding for the creation of the National Bioethics Center at Tuskegee University, where she was later director.

Dr. Gamble highlights the 2005 conference she convened for Black bioethicists to discuss and propose a Black agenda for bioethics that brought issues of Black health and racial injustices in healthcare to bioethics discussions. She stresses the importance of community engagement and the need to focus on the trustworthiness of institutions, which includes a discussion about vaccine hesitancy in communities of color during the Covid-19 pandemic. The interview concludes with her move to George Washington University, her courses on race and public health, and her evolving work as historian of Black women in medicine.