On May 25, 2020, George Floyd said “I can’t breathe” more than 20 times before he suffocated on a street in Minneapolis. On Jan. 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols repeatedly screamed, “Mom, mom, mom” as he was beaten to death on a street in Memphis.

Both were Black men. Both died at the hands of police officers wielding the power of life and death.

“This is like déjà vu all over again. That’s only two years ago,” said Robert Winn, director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, a professor of pulmonary disease and critical care medicine at the VCU School of Medicine, and the guest editor of The Cancer Letter during February, Black History Month.

“It’s a cultural problem. It’s some kind of bias. It’s a disrespect,” said Otis Brawley, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, and co-editor of the Cancer History Project.

Both physicians have had life-threatening encounters with police—Brawley was thrown to the ground and held at gunpoint for standing in the garage of his own home; Winn was thrown to the ground and held at gunpoint for walking toward his own car.