Lynette Denny: women's cancer researcher with global impact

Abstract

As a young child in apartheid era South Africa, Lynette Denny saw police regularly raid the quarters of her family's domestic staff to find Black people who did not have the documents they were legally required to carry to prove their identity and employment. It left Denny with “a permanent feeling of fear, anxiety, and rage at what people could and did do to others”, she recalls. Witnessing the injustice, however, was seminal in defining her path. “Because I was on the White privilege side, I think my whole life I've wanted to undo that, so I stayed in public service, I have worked almost exclusively with Black patients, and I suppose in my own little way, tried to make reparation”, she says. Department of ErrorSamarasekera U. Lynette Denny: women's cancer researcher with global impact. Lancet 2023; 401: 261—In this Profile, HPV-negative has been corrected to HIV-negative in the sixth sentence of the second paragraph. The online version has been corrected as of Feb 9, 2023. Full-Text PDF