If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

Dr. Caldicott on the medical implications of nuclear power and climate change, and the risk of nuclear war

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Photo: Jess Worth, New Internationalist, June 2008

Photo: Jess Worth, New Internationalist, June 2008

In October 2008, Dr. Caldicott gave a lecture to medical colleagues (grand rounds) in Calgary. The lecture was part of her annual speaking tour in North America. During the speech, Dr. Caldicott describes in detail the medical and environmental risks associated with the complex process of the nuclear fuel cycle, and climate change. Without a knowledge of the facts presented in her lecture, she says, the heavily funded nuclear industry will proceed apace, and the world will see epidemics of malignancies by the hundreds of thousands in children and adults. And global warming left unchecked will present enormous challenges to public health, creating billions of ecological refugees and an increase in tropical diseases. Global warming may be greatly exacerbated by permafrost melting and an ocean phenomenon called the albedo flip, which she explains in the presentation. Neither of these threats were noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their reports on global warming. Nuclear power, Dr. Caldicott declares, is not the solution to global warming, and in fact contributes to both global warming and ozone depletion. Dr. Caldicott refers the attending doctors to a map of Europe showing the enormous reach of radiation from the Chernobyl disaster.

Photo: Vanity Fair

Photo: Vanity Fair

As a prescription for survival, Dr. Caldicott says the U.S. and the world must follow the explicit guidelines in Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy [also see our August 4 episode]. Medical professionals, and the general public, must now practice the ultimate form or preventive medicine in speaking out against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and demanding action on global warming.

Dr. Caldicott concludes her presentation by talking about the continuing risk of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, and the Dead Hand device that would launch all of Russia’s missiles (toward the U.S. and elsewhere) if the Russian leadership were killed. Read the Wired story, Soviet Doomsday Device Still Armed and Ready. Both the U.S. and Russia have embarked on building a large new generation of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. is arming space to dominate the planet. She outlines the enormous killing capacity of just one nuclear-armed Trident submarine. See the Scientists for Global Responsibility article, Could one Trident submarine cause nuclear winter? and the CBS News/60 Minutes story, The Deadliest Weapon Ever: Navy Creates Weapon Against Terror.

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