She said Virginia has an opportunity to “lead the nation in telling the truth and addressing racial inequities in health care.”
She told them that her cousin Bruce Tucker, who sponsored the resolution, was a responsible father, a loyal employee, a good citizen and a victim.
“Bruce Tucker was the victim of a racist system that devalued his life and did not recognize him as a human being, and therefore would not treat him that way,” Turner testified. “The complete disregard for Bruce as a human being benefited science and humanity, and brought immeasurable benefits to the Medical College of Virginia.”
Fifty-six years ago, Bruce Tucker’s heart helped Virginia make history. After a 54-year-old man was taken to hospital with a head injury, medical teams removed his heart and used it in the first transplant of its kind in the South. The surgeon who performed the operation was then praised and immortalized. Their names were displayed on a plaque outside the hospital building that read, “Birthplace of Heart Transplants.”
But in recent years, the detailed story of how the transplant was done has come to light, and it shows. A surgeon harvested a black worker’s heart and transplanted it into a white businessman’s body without his family’s consent. The more detailed story, which I told in a previous column, was that his family learned from a mortician, not a doctor, that he was missing his heart and kidneys. Relatives still have questions about what happened at the hospital between the time Tucker was able to speak and the time he underwent surgery less than a day later. The family lost a lawsuit in 1972 in which lawyers fought over whether Tucker should be declared dead. A medical examiner performed tests and found there was no brain activity, but there was still no legal definition of brain death.
What happened to Tucker is both shocking and shocking, given the many ways in which Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies have historically been experimented with in the name of scientific and medical progress. Not surprising. There are many terrible examples.
Consider the Tuskegee experiment. In this experiment, the government spent decades studying how syphilis ravaged the bodies of black men without their informed consent and how treatment was withheld even after treatments were widely available. Consider also Henrietta Lacks’ “immortal” cells, which were taken when the mother of her five children in Baltimore was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her extraordinary cells led to important scientific discoveries and profits for corporations, while her descendants knew nothing and received no compensation.
Tucker’s experience is part of that side of history, the side that is difficult to internalize. That’s why what Virginia lawmakers have done recently is noteworthy. They owned it. The state Senate and House of Representatives unanimously passed the resolution, acknowledging that they “deeply deplore the unethical use of Black bodies by medical institutions in the Commonwealth.”
Although this legislative measure did not receive much public attention, it is important. It’s important to Tucker’s family, and it’s important to others who understand how past mistakes influence modern practices.
After learning what happened to Tucker, Philip Thompson, an attorney and former president of the Loudoun County NAACP, brought the issue to the attention of state Sen. Jennifer B. Boysko (D-Fairfax). He introduced the resolution last year, but it was taken up by the Republican-led House Rules Committee for further consideration. One member’s reason was, “There were so many disappointing stories that I was worried that this resolution would last forever.”
Thompson said the recent resolution’s passage is an important “first step in addressing health disparities.”
He said Tucker’s story felt personal to him. Not only because it happened in his lifetime, but also because his family was on both sides of the transplant process. Thompson’s son was an organ donor, and his family decided to donate his late granddaughter’s organs in hopes of helping others. Thompson said she has seen “residual fear” deter many African-Americans from registering to be organ donors.
“If you ask an African American, ‘Why don’t you sign a donor card?’ they say, ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital to use my organs and have them pull the plug,'” Thompson said. Ta. “You’re not just talking about the past. You’re talking about the impact it’s having right now, today, on something that could potentially save lives.”
In a statement sent to me, Ms. Boisko described the resolution as “an effort to promote reconciliation with the goal of preventing further harm.”
This resolution acknowledges not only what happened to Tucker, but also other acts committed through the Medical College of Virginia. The document describes how medical practitioners in need of bodies hired grave robbers to dig up bodies in black cemeteries, and that examination of human remains found during excavations revealed that most were of African descent and at least nine children. It describes how something happened.
Boisko said he worked with Thompson on the effort and “sat in shock and anger” when the House Rules Committee refused to pass it. He said new leadership is now in place. Congressman Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) is the first African American to serve as Speaker of the House.
“This year, Bruce Tucker’s family was treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, allowing them to share his story and accept our apologies,” Boyzko said. “Apologies are important.”
she is right that’s right. They are important at an individual level, but they are also important at a societal level, especially when society has repeatedly seen how distrust in the health care system leads to avoided appointments, missed diagnoses, and premature deaths.
Virginia Commonwealth University, formerly known as the Medical College of Virginia and which oversees the hospital system where Tucker met his end on May 24, 1968, is a former Richmond journalist named Chip Jones about the transplant, titled After writing the book, he apologized to Tucker’s family. Organ Thieves: The shocking story of the first heart transplant in the segregated South. But the apology felt insincere to Tucker’s family, who found out about it through the news, so Turner asked university officials to recognize her cousin’s contributions and fight racial inequities in the medical field. He called for measures to be taken to deal with the situation.
When I spoke with Turner recently, she said she was encouraged by conversations with university officials. She also said the state legislators’ apology “shines a light where no one has before,” which she hopes will lead to “building trust and better outcomes.” expressed her expectations.
It may have been too late to apologize, but it was never too late, she said: “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
