If you're one of the millions of people who've seen Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" in theaters over the last couple of weeks, then you got a small peek at the destructive power of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. Since the bombings 78 years ago, the number of nuclear weapons and their power have increased dramatically.
Last week, a group of top medical experts published an editorial in over 100 medical journals calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons because of the risk they pose to human survival. GBH's All Things Considered guest host Judie Yuill spoke with one of the editorials authors, Dr. Ira Helfand. Helfand is also co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Judie Yuill: Can you tell us a little more about the points you make in the editorial and why you and the other authors felt that now is the time to bring attention to the dangers of nuclear war?
Dr. Ira Helfand: Yeah, I think we were motivated by our growing concern that the danger of nuclear war is increasing dramatically, both because of the war in Ukraine, but also because of other developments. The unstable situation in Korea, the rising tension between the United States and China, which could lead to nuclear war over Taiwan, and the ongoing conflict on an almost daily basis between India and Pakistan, which could also escalate to nuclear war.
We're also motivated by the new information that has become available to the scientific community over the last year about just how devastating a nuclear war would be. A study published last summer in the journal Nature Food showed that even a limited war between India and Pakistan could cause enough climate disruption to trigger a famine that would kill 2 billion people, including 130 million here in the United States, and end civilization as we know it. A full-scale war between the United States and Russia would kill over 5 billion people.
Yuill: So it's very important for the medical community to raise awareness of this risk.
Helfand: Exactly. This is the greatest threat to public health in the world today. And the medical community has two responsibilities. One is to alert people to this danger in the hopes that they will take action and do something to eliminate the danger. Secondly, to advise and make clear to the general public that in the event that nuclear war happens, there is nothing that the medical community can do to alleviate the suffering that will result.
Yuill: Well, there probably is expectation that the medical community would step up and do something.
Helfand: That's right. And the medical community and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been clear for decades that that is not the case, that nuclear war is something which cannot be treated after the fact. It must be prevented.
Yuill: With over 100 medical journals publishing this editorial and a very long list of authors, it seems like this call to action involved a lot of collaboration. How did that come together?
Helfand: The project was initiated by Dr. Andrew Haines in the United Kingdom, who thought that it was really important for the medical community to speak out again at this moment. He reached out to the editors of several of the journals and to several other people in the leadership of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. It came together actually quite quickly because there was a great consensus amongst all of us that the moment absolutely demanded this kind of response from the medical community.
Yuill: I've heard other people speculate that we could be closer to nuclear war now than maybe we ever have been. You seem to be indicating that's true. How worried should we be about it?
Helfand: I think we should be very worried. I think we are closer than we have ever been. Experts like former Defense Secretary William Perry have been telling us this since 2018, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has increased the danger even more. We are essentially heading towards a nuclear war if we do not begin to act very differently. One of the biggest parts of the problem is that we are not acting as though we are facing this kind of danger. The general population back in the 1980s understood the danger of nuclear war, and millions of people became active and they brought about fundamental change in U.S. and Soviet nuclear policy. We don't have that kind of understanding yet today, and that's part of what we were trying to achieve with this editorial, which is being published, as you know, by more than 100 journals. This is itself an extraordinary development. Medical journals are usually very concerned not to publish anything that has been published anywhere else before. The fact that all of these journals have agreed to publish the same piece indicates how strongly they feel about the danger and how urgent they feel it is that people take action.
Yuill: Are you saying that people have become complacent?
Helfand: I think they have forgotten about the nuclear danger. People of my generation, people who lived through the Cold War in the early '80s have really put this out of mind, and younger people have never been taught about it. When you talk to college students and high school students today, they really have never been given the basic information about what nuclear war would involve and so they don't understand. They don't know that this is a problem they need to be concerned about when they hear about it. They're appropriately upset as they are about the climate crisis and they react in the same way they have to the climate crisis, which is to want to do something to eliminate this danger.
Yuill: So what would you recommend that civilians do to reduce the risk of nuclear war?
Helfand: Well, here in the United States, we have launched a campaign called Back From the Brink, which seeks to bring about fundamental change in U.S. nuclear policy. It calls on the United States to recognize that nuclear weapons do not make us safe, that they are the greatest threat to our safety and to our survival. And of course, in the United States, to begin now to negotiate with all eight of the other countries that have nuclear weapons for a verifiable, enforceable, time bound agreement to eliminate their arsenals so that all of these countries will be able to join together in supporting the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. None of them are willing to disarm unilaterally, but if they can negotiate this kind of an agreement amongst themselves, they can bring about universal nuclear disarmament, which is what we need. So the Back From the Brink campaign is focused on getting resolutions passed and cities and towns and getting organizations around the country to endorse this call for negotiations to end the nuclear weapons era.
We also have a resolution before the United States House of Representatives, H. Res. 77, which was introduced by Congressman Jim McGovern and is also sponsored by Congressman Pressley and Congressman Neal. We need to get the entire delegation in Congress to support this resolution, and we need to get our senators, Senator Markey and Senator Warren, to introduce a companion resolution in the United States Senate. This is perhaps the most dramatic way we have of illustrating the need for the elimination of nuclear weapons and for mobilizing champions in Congress to carry this banner forward.
There's no guarantee that this process will be successful, even if we convinced the United States to reach out to Russia and China and the other nuclear weapon states. They may say they're not interested, but there's no reason to assume that because we've never tried this. So that's what we should do. We should reach out and hope for the best. If the initiative fails, we are back in the same position we're in right now, which is a very bad place to be, but things are no worse, which is to say there's absolutely nothing to lose by trying.
Yuill: Thank you so much for joining us.
Helfand: Thank you, Judie. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
