[3][4] She has cited her early life experience with Norfolk's mixed-race health clinics as a source of her interest in race, medicine, and equity, recalling the indignity with which she was treated during routine doctor's visits.
[2] Her high school physics teacher helped her navigate the admissions process, paying for her SAT registration and putting her in touch with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students.
[8] In this work, she has advocated for the perspective of marginalized communities—including low-income, disabled, and racial and ethnic minority communities—who have an earned mistrust of the biomedical research community.
[10] The commission was formed after the revelations around the Tuskegee syphilis study and was the first national body working to address biomedical ethics and informed consent.
[13] King's experiences led to her involvement in the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, where she served from 1979 to 1981.
[14] In 1989, she was appointed to the Joint Working Group on Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of Human Genome Research, which formed that year to coordinate programs run by the NIH and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
[15] The ELSI Working Group issued its first report in January 1990 setting forth a function and purpose for the program to anticipate problems and identify solutions to mapping the human genome.
[17] King is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the National Academy of Medicine, as well as a fellow of The Hastings Center, a non-partisan think tank dedicated to bioethics research.
[22][5] King married Roger Wilkins, an African-American civil rights leader, professor of history, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in the early 1980s.