Dr. Helen Caldicott
President of Nuclear Policy Research Institute

"The New Nuclear Threat" - May 8, 2003

Dr. Helen Caldicott has devoted the last 25 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age, and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction.

While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries. The international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.

Dr. Caldicott was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, specializing in cystic fibrosis, and on the staff of the Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Mass., until 1980 when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at the Adelaide Children's Hospital in 1975.

Ladies Home Journal, named Dr. Caldicott as one of the "100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century" (May 1999). She has written for numerous publications and has authored five books, Nuclear Madness (1979, revised edition by W.W. Norton in 1994), Missile Envy (1984, Bantam), If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth (1992, W.W. Norton) and A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography (1996, W.W. Norton; published as A Passionate Life in Australia by Random House). Her most recent book is The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex, published in April 2002 by The New Press in the US and Scribe Publishing in Australia and New Zealand.

She moved back to the United States in 1995. She lectured at the New School for Social Research on the Media, Global Politics and the Environment, and she hosted a weekly radio talk show on WBAI (Pacifica). Recently, she returned to Australia and now divides her time between the US and Australia where she lectures widely. She is also the Founder and President of the recently established Nuclear Policy Research Institute headquartered in Washington D.C.

Updated on 5/8/2003
Photo Credit: "Amazing Grace"