“How close we came to extinction, and it is forgotten now.” So begins Nobel Prize-winner Bernard Lown’s story of his fight against the nuclear symptom of what he calls “the disease of militarism.” It is still active and highly contagious, as witnessed by events in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and all too many other places. And it can only be stopped, as this extraordinary memoir vividly demonstrates, by concerned citizens working together. In 1981, brimming with anxiety about the escalating nuclear confrontation with the Russians, Lown launched a USA-USSR antinuclear movement with Soviet cardiologist Evgeni Chazov: The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Over the next four years Lown and Chazov recruited more than 150,000 doctors worldwide to join their movement, held international conferences that included U. S. and Russian military leaders, met with numerous world political leaders, and appeared on television programs broadcast throughout the USSR and the U. S. In 1985, despite active opposition from the U. S. government and NATO, Lown and Chazov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of IPPNW. This dramatic story is told with a vibrancy of language that illuminates dramatic scenes such as Lown convincing King Hussein of Jordan to join the anti-nuclear struggle during a medical exam, the heart attack of a Russian journalist at an IPPNW press conference, and Lown’s face-to-face conversations with Gorbachev. Although this book is concerned with a potential clash of superpowers, Lown writes, “At the heart of these cascading events is a human narrative.” “Historical amnesia is a prelude for repeated victimization,” Lown says. Prescription for Survival probes the past to help us understand what drove, and continues to drive, nuclear proliferation, and offers a blueprint showing how we can join together across national boundaries to end it.

This book builds on Robert Jay Lifton's theory of psychic numbing, and takes madness as a guiding metaphor. It shows that public perceptions of the Bomb are a kaleidoscope of ever-changing ideas and images. Recent changes in public awareness only signal new symptoms of this public madness, symptoms unwittingly fostered by the antinuclear movement. Since the newest nuclear images follow the same psychological pattern as their predecessors, they are likely to lead us deeper into nuclear madness. Chernus offers new interpretations of four major theorists int the psychology of religion—Paul Tillich, R.D. Laing, Mircea Eliade, and James Hillman—to trace the roots of nuclear madness back to the onset of modernity, when the West gained technological mastery at the price of losing religious imagination and ontological security. The author develops an interpretation of Lifton's own thought as an ontological and religious psychology. Drawing on the work of Eliade and Hillman, he goes on to suggest that madness reflects a repressed desire to transform life by opening up the floodgates of imagination. A conscious cultivation of the play of imagination can lead the way through madness to sanity and peace. But, imagination can only respond to the nuclear threat if it is acted out in a new brand of peace activism that blends pragmatic politics with psychological and religious transformation.

"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced."--Helen Caldicott First published in 1978, Helen Caldicott's cri du coeur about the dangers of nuclear power became an instant classic. In the intervening sixteen years much has changed--the Cold War is over, nuclear arms production has decreased, and there has been a marked growth in environmental awareness. But the nuclear genie has not been forced back into the bottle. The disaster at Chernobyl and the "incidents" at other plants around the world have disproven the image of "safe" nuclear power. Nuclear waste dumping has further poisoned our environment, and developing nuclear technology in the Third World poses still further risks. In this completely revised, updated, and expanded edition, Dr. Caldicott defines for the 1990s the dangers of this madness--including the insidious influence of the nuclear power industry and the American government's complicity in medical "experiments" using nuclear material--and calls on us to accept the moral challenge to fight against it, both for our own sake and for that of future generations.

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Written by world-renowned scientists, this volume portrays the possible direct and indirect devastation of human health from a nuclear attack. The most comprehensive work yet produced on this subject, The Medical Implications of Nuclear War includes an overview of the potential environmental and physical effects of nuclear bombardment, describes the problems of choosing who among the injured would get the scarce medical care available, addresses the nuclear arms race from a psychosocial perspective, and reviews the medical needs--in contrast to the medical resources likely to be available--after a nuclear attack. "It should serve as the definitive statement on the consequences of nuclear war."--Arms Control Today