International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 63 countries, representing doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned people who share the goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world free from the threat of nuclear annihilation. The organization's headquarters is in Malden, Massachusetts. IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

IPPNW affiliates are national medical organizations with a common commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the prevention of war. Affiliates range in size from a handful of dedicated physicians and medical students to tens of thousands of activists and their supporters. As independent organizations within a global federation, IPPNW affiliates engage in a wide variety of activities related to war, health, social justice, and environmentalism.

Formation

In 1961, future IPPNW founder Dr. Bernard Lown formed prevenient sister organization, the US Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) at Harvard, concerned about the medical effects of nuclear weapons and war.

In December 1980, following a 6 letter exchange and an April meeting in Moscow between Dr. Lown and Dr. Yevgeny Chazov of the USSR Cardiology Institute, they agreed to meet in Geneva along with Dr. Eric Chivian, James E. Muller, Herbert Abrams, Leonid Ilyin, and Mikhail Kuzin to form IPPNW. There, IPPNW vowed that its focus would be the prevention of nuclear war and to spread awareness of the medical effects and dangers of a nuclear war internationally, along with strengthening medical community ties between the Soviet Union and the US. They received this award for "hav[ing] mobilized the conscience of hundreds of thousands of people the world over in the cause of peace and against a thermonuclear holocaust.".

Controversy

During the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, 200 to 300 human rights advocates protested outside, citing co-recipient Dr. Yevgeny Chazof of partaking and being complicit with the 1972 political attacks against ex-Soviet physicist Dr. Andrei D. Sakharov, who himself won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize On 12 November, Heiner Geisler of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany wrote a letter to the award committee denouncing Dr. Chazof and informing the committee of his actions. This had little effect on the delivery of the award as Committee Chairman Egil Aarvik declared in his speech, "This year’s prize is more concerned with the problem of disarmament, but is also at a deeper level concerned with human rights, perhaps even the most fundamental human right of them all, the right to live.". Citing a principle of the medical profession—that doctors have an obligation to prevent what they cannot treat—a global federation of physician experts came together to explain the medical and scientific facts about nuclear war to policy makers and to the public, and to advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world's arsenals.

Founding co-presidents Bernard Lown of the United States and Yevgeniy Chazov of the Soviet Union were joined by other early IPPNW leaders including James E. Muller, Ioan Moraru of Romania, Eric Chivian and Herb Abrams of the US and Mikhail Kuzin and Leonid Ilyin of the Soviet Union. They organized a team to conduct scientific research based on data collected by Japanese colleagues who had studied the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and drew upon their knowledge of the medical effects of burn, blast, and radiation injuries. and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

In recent years, IPPNW and its affiliates have drawn new attention to the health and environmental effects of uranium mining and processing, conducting community health surveys in India and challenging Australia's plans to expand its uranium export industry. In 2010, the federation's international council passed a resolution calling for a global ban on uranium mining because of the dangers it poses to health and the environment.

IPPNW has also studied a nuclear danger within the medical profession—the use of highly enriched uranium in reactors that produce medical isotopes—and has campaigned for the conversion of those vulnerable reactors to non-weapons-grade uranium.

IPPNW launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007, and is now the lead medical NGO campaigning for a global treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons, along with more than 200 humanitarian, environmental, human rights, peace and development organizations in more than 80 countries. ICAN went on to receive the 2017 Nobel Prize for peace.

In the 1990s, IPPNW expanded its scope to address the continuum of armed violence that undermines health and security. IPPNW is committed to ending war and to addressing the causes of armed conflict from a public health perspective. The global campaign to ban landmines marked IPPNW's first major entry into the non-nuclear arena. The federation became engaged in addressing small arms violence in 2001 when it launched Aiming for Prevention, which has since broadened to include the public health dimensions of all types of armed violence. Aiming for Prevention has been driven by IPPNW affiliates from the global South—primarily Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and South Asia—whose members live and work in areas where armed violence is a constant threat and consumes significant portions of health care budgets.

As part of Aiming for Prevention, IPPNW participated in a broad-based global coalition of civil society organizations that campaigned successfully for passage of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). IPPNW is an active participant in the World Health Organization's Violence Prevention Alliance, and coordinates the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) Public Health Network.

Continuing medical education courses in the emerging field of peace through health have been developed by IPPNW with university affiliates in Norway, Denmark, the UK, and Canada. IPPNW supports and encourages academic work to advance the understanding of the interconnections between peace and health.

See also

  • Anti-nuclear organizations
  • International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons
  • List of anti-war organizations
  • List of books about nuclear issues
  • List of films about nuclear issues
  • List of peace activists
  • Nuclear Weapons: The Road to Zero
  • Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament

References

  • The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
  • International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War records, Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine