Comment: UN nuclear weapons ban is a small step toward sanity

Published in the Everett Herald 01.31.21
By Dr. David C. Hall

It’s one small step for global sanity! Nuclear weapons have now joined chemical and biological weapons and land mines as internationally banned weapons.

On Jan. 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force to cement a categorical ban on nuclear weapons for the 50 nations signing and ratifying the treaty, 75 years after the United States became the first and only nation to use nuclear weapons in wartime.

Despite this huge step for the safety and survivability of human civilization, supporters of this treaty face a mountain of opposition led by the United States.

Our country has waged an aggressive campaign to thwart this prohibition with its immense power and resources while maintaining an ever-present threat to use nuclear weapons whenever we say “All options are on the table.”

Up until now we have pressured potential signers and kept all NATO allies from signing. The other eight nuclear weapon states have also refused to sign. Austria, Ireland and Lichtenstein are the only European nations to sign. The other nuclear nations — Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — have boycotted the treaty process. Kazakhstan and South Africa are former nuclear weapon states to sign and ratify the TPNW. Brazil dismantled its nuclear weapons program and has signed but not yet ratified it.

None of the nuclear states or NATO countries are bound by this treaty. What this treaty does, however, is establish a first-ever international precedent for outlawing nuclear weapons. Hopefully this will pressure the nuclear weapon states and their allies to finally negotiate the elimination of these horrific weapons. The United States, Russia and China all agreed to do so when they signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970. Nonetheless nuclear-armed arsenals keep getting faster, more accurate, more usable and more deadly despite fewer warheads.

Going forward, conventional war-fighting capabilities will need to be included in these negotiations. Nuclear weapons have helped less powerful countries fend off the conventional military and nuclear threats from their more powerful adversaries. North Korea will not give up its nuclear deterrents unless the overwhelming conventional war-fighting capabilities of China and United States are on the table. Negotiations to replace nuclear weapons will require credible safeguards for survival of less powerful countries.

This treaty is so important. Nuclear weapons violate international laws that protect innocent civilians and the environment. Even a small nuclear exchange could blacken the skies and starve billions of people.

The U.S. still has nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, hypersonic missiles are coming, nuclear command and control systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks, retaliatory responses are disseminated down the chain of command, and under current U.S. law the president of the United States has absolute power to order the launch of nuclear weapons even if he or she has only minutes to distinguish a real attack from a false alarm. Our military chain of command is built to follow the president’s orders or to launch if the president is incapacitated.

We have a new U.S. administration. President Trump had sole authority to start a nuclear war. Now is the time to seriously push to eliminate these ecologically devastating weapons of mass murder. Call President Biden to sign and our senators to ratify the TPNW. Nuclear weapons are repugnant to the values of decency, democracy and the sacredness of life.

Dr. David C. Hall is past president, of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

WPSR Statement in Opposition to SB 5244

Prepared by WPSR’s Climate Crisis Task Force

Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) is a 40-year-old, physician-led organization concerned with the social determinants of health representing approximately 1000 health professionals across the state of Washington. We are opposed to SB 5244 (a bill to encourage the production of advanced nuclear reactors, small modular reactors, and components).

The climate crisis gives us little time to act to reduce emissions by shifting our economy off of fossil fuels.  We at WPSR are highly concerned about the health impacts of climate change and air pollution and therefore applaud our legislators for the efforts to promote means of electricity generation that lower emissions and consequently reduce health risks.  This bill, unfortunately, fails on three counts: 1) It would worsen economic inequity 2) It is not a cost-effective means of reducing emissions. 3) It would harm indigenous communities who already suffer disproportionately from our current nuclear programs.

Our state has an extremely regressive tax system and currently faces a revenue shortfall.  Cutting taxes for big businesses in a pandemic-induced recession, thereby increasing economic inequality, further exacerbates this problem.  Since economic inequity is a driving cause of health disparities we oppose any further shifts of our tax burden away from the wealthy and on to low-income workers and consumers.

Solar and wind-generated electricity is now cheaper than coal and cost-competitive with gas generation even prior to consideration of the social costs of carbon and other pollutants.  At this point, the solutions to the climate crisis are more dependent on regulating and/or pricing carbon, promoting public transportation and fuel efficiency standards, and improving transmission than on subsidizing low-carbon generation. Additionally, there are simply not enough potential jobs to warrant subsidizing the construction of machinery that might never even be used. We favor taking a more cost-effective and rapidly applicable approach to emissions reduction.  Several bills under consideration — including the clean fuels standard, the building electrification bill, and the update to the growth management act — would be more rapidly effective at lower costs than this proposal.

Nuclear energy requires the mining of uranium and the storage of radioactive waste both of which cause disproportionate harm to indigenous communities. This bill contains no regulations of the waste, no provisions to protect vulnerable communities. As such it is completely unacceptable to us.  

This proposal is a special interest giveaway that would do little to improve the lives of Washingtonians while posing grave risks to some and would be woefully inadequate as a means of reducing emissions.  We will gladly support serious proposals that reduce greenhouse gasses while improving health and well being.  This bill fails on all counts and we ask that you oppose it.

Comment: All-electric homes would clear air we breathe

Published in the Everett Herald 01.17.21
By Mark Vossler, Jon Witte and Nancy Johnson

With each new year comes a clean slate; an opportunity to start again by resolving self-improvement, often focusing on our health.

Traditionally, after a season of indulgence, there are resolutions to “clean up our act” regarding diet and exercise. But did you know the gas stove you’ve used to bake those delights is more harmful to your health than the snickerdoodles you consumed?

Health is at the top of everyone’s mind during this challenging covid-19 pandemic. There has been a wide-ranging focus on public health as well as our own personal well-being. The response to this pandemic has been far-reaching and multi-faceted: scientific research, policy-making, education, communication, outreach to vulnerable communities. With vaccines FDA approved and starting to be administered we can begin to breathe a sigh of relief, but this endeavor will also take determined effort, effective organization, and commitment of resources both human and financial to vaccinate millions of Americans.

Playing out in parallel is the crisis of climate change, presenting challenges even greater than those we currently face with the covid-19 pandemic. A multi-faceted approach is needed here too.

The World Health Organization considers climate change to be the “greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.” It is responsible for the increase in wildfires and the visible, choking smoke that fills our local skies every summer. Climate change causes more frequent and severe heat waves; it warms our oceans creating conditions for more violent storms; it has been linked to the emergence of new infectious diseases including novel viruses such as covid-19. Additionally, the evidence is overwhelming that rapid climate change is human caused. The burning of dirty fossil fuels has resulted in a dangerous rise in levels of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants in our atmosphere. These pollutants not only exacerbate climate change, but pose direct and immediate negative impacts to human health. Years of research and clinical experience have shown that these pollutants are responsible for lung and heart disease, mental health stress, heat-related injury and other physical ailments.

While we see and feel the immediate effects of an acute deadly illness, we often overlook the more subtle effects that accumulate over time. Our fossil fuel use is a good example of this phenomenon. The very buildings we live and work in are the fastest-growing source of carbon pollution in Washington state. The stove in your kitchen and the heat in your home, if powered by gas or oil, creates invisible pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, fine particulate matter, ultra fine particles and formaldehyde are emitted into your “clean” indoor air making it anything but healthy. In fact the nitrogen dioxide levels indoors after one hour of cooking on a gas stove would be illegal if found outdoors. These pollutants are linked to multiple serious medical problems including acute and chronic lung diseases, cardiovascular disease and premature death, various neurologic conditions, lung and breast cancer, and type 2 diabetes. The incidence of asthma in children is 42 percent higher in homes that use gas stoves for cooking.

Efforts are underway to work toward all electric homes, schools, workplaces and commercial spaces. Gov. Jay Inslee recently announced wide-ranging climate priorities that include a state-wide effort to phase gas out of residential buildings, the first of its kind nationally. Cities and counties in Washington can join the movements of cities in other states like California to ensure new construction is all-electric. Some have already done this, including Bellingham, Seattle, Issaquah and Thurston County.

Washington is blessed with some of the cleanest and cheapest electricity in the nation, making 100 percent fossil-free electricity attractive to builders, homeowners and investors. Clean energy jobs will flourish as we make the transition from fossil fuel-powered construction to electric building standards. All-electric homes are less expensive to build upfront and there is no expensive need to pay for connections to gas pipeline infrastructure. All-electric appliances are readily available and popular, often coming with rebates for highly efficient models.

A resolution to make this year is to encourage the Washington state Legislature and your local decision makers to aggressively transition to all-electric buildings. Included in Inslee’s environmental priorities for this year’s legislative session is HB 1084, the first legislation in the U.S. to address fuel switching state-wide. Additionally, municipal governments across the state are beginning to follow the examples set by Bellingham, Seattle and Olympia to mandate all-electric new buildings.

The benefits are many, yet despite landmark efforts to remove fossil fuels from our state’s energy grid in 2019 and to update our emissions reductions goals to match the latest climate science in 2020, we are not on track to meet those goals. Just as we hope to stick to our personal resolutions this New Year, we must resolve to renew our focus on reducing carbon emissions to promote a healthier environment in 2021 and every year going forward.

Dr. Mark Vossler is a cardiologist practicing in Kirkland and serves as the president of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Dr. Jonathan Witte is a retired rheumatologist from Everett. He is an active member of WPSR and other climate action groups.
Nancy Johnson is a retired registered nurse from Edmonds currently working on climate and environmental justice issues with WPSR, Sno-Isle Sierra Club and other organizations.

Doctors should address patient medical debt

By Daniel Low
Special to The Seattle Times

The year 2020 was an inspiring year to be a doctor. I saw colleagues tired, understaffed, fearing they might contract COVID-19 and nonetheless persevering to provide care to those most in need.

Alongside social justice leaders, doctors mobilized to collectively address enduring racial inequities in health care, with the American Medical Association proclaiming racism a threat to public health. Locally, doctors were in the streets, leading powerful marches through downtown Seattle against racialized police brutality.

We bore witness to doctors like Anthony Fauci espousing important public health messages, despite political pressure to do otherwise. My colleagues have made me proud to identify as a physician this year. But as we enter a new year, there is a glaring hole in doctors’ pursuit of medical justice — health economics. This year physicians and health care administrators must defend the economic well-being of our patients.

Even before COVID-19, nearly one in three Americans delayed medical care because of fears of medical costs. COVID-19 has only made this problem worse. As a family medicine doctor caring for patients in the hospital and in the clinic, I’m all too familiar with this conundrum. Last week, a patient, dreading medical debt, refused my recommendation to visit the emergency department when her usually high blood pressure was dangerously low, a serious signal that she needed medical attention. Another patient had the same cost-conscious rationale when explaining why he waited until the brink of intubation before going to the hospital, despite being short of breath with a known COVID-19 infection.

These anxieties are not unfounded. An estimated half million Americans file for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills, accounting for two-thirds of all bankruptcy filings. Even when not filing for bankruptcy, countless Americans face economic ruin when they return from visits to health care facilities with surprise medical bills charging thousands of dollars. The sinister “surprise medical bill” is so commonplace, it has inspired a national investigative news program — the National Public Radio / Kaiser Health “Bill of the Month.” Why do we allow this treachery?

Historically, it has been in large part because hospitals and doctors, who often benefit from the existing system, have fought against laws banning the practice. This may be why the American Medical Association lobbied Congress to alter language buried in the recently passed $900 billion relief package that would ban surprise medical bills.

While hospitals position themselves as beacons of community support, and doctors swear an oath to “do no harm,” these promises ring hollow when we continue advocating for health care practices that economically ruin those whom we serve. It isn’t enough that we are good at demonstrating acute compassion — comforting a sick child or protesting an immediate act of racial injustice — we need to improve our longitudinal empathy for the economic well-being of our patients. We need to put our money where our mouth is; failing to recognize our contribution to economic inequity threatens the integrity of our profession itself.

As doctors we must acknowledge the collective power we possess to change the economic structure of medicine. It is time we stop exclusively relying on the heroic philanthropy of folks like those at RIP Medical Debt, a brilliant nonprofit that has eradicated nearly $3 billion in medical debt via group debt purchasing. With medical debt continuing to balloon — it has risen another 7% since last year alone — philanthropy is insufficient. We need policy change. And this is one of the few areas with bipartisan support. If Republicans and Democrats were able to come together on the new legislation that bans out-of-network medical providers from charging beyond the in-network cost for services provided in emergency departments and some nonemergent settings, starting next year, then health care providers can and must play an active role, too. Our patients deserve honesty. We need to demand hospitals, clinics, insurance companies and administration provide cost transparency.

As we enter a new year, my dream for 2021 is for my profession to acknowledge the economic inequities that we help drive and to act justly for restitution. May 2021 be a year that not only limits the spread of COVID-19 but also limits the spread of medical debt.

Daniel Low is a family medicine physician at HealthPoint in Renton, member of the Board of the King County Medical Society, and member of WPSR’s Economic Inequity & Health Task Force

Celebrating a Historic Step Toward the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

Written by Mona Lee

The following piece is to be published in the upcoming Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action newsletter.

            This is a historic time of celebration for Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and other organizational members of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).  On October 24, 2020 Honduras became the 50th nation to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Note: is was passed in July).  With that, the treaty will enter into force on January 22, 2021. Ground Zero will celebrate this event during its annual Martin Luther King birthday weekend activities January 15-17.

            The passing of this Treaty marks a significant milestone in a long effort to abolish nuclear weapons. 75 years ago, in response to World War II and the horrific nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United Nations was founded to develop cooperation among nations and prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again.

Article VI of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nuclear weapon states to  "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” Additionally, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 1991 limited the number of warheads that could be deployed.  Even so, today nearly a dozen countries possess a total of  13,410 nuclear  warheads with Approximately 91 percent of all nuclear warheads owned by the U.S. and Russia.  These weapons are many times more powerful than the bombs that wiped out Hiroshima, killing and maiming thousands of innocent citizens.

            More recently, ICAN organized a series of three international anti-nuclear weapons conferences: one in Oslo, Norway in 2013; the second in Nayarit, Mexico in 2014; and another in Vienna, also in 2014. These meetings focused upon the horrific health effects of nuclear weapons testing upon downwinders: Utah residents down wind of the Nevada nuclear testing; the Marshall Islanders in the Pacific; and the villages of Kazakhstan down-wind of Soviet nuclear tests. Hundreds of bombs have been dropped, and their radiation has caused widespread cancers and untimely deaths of thousands of people in those parts of the world.

At the 2014 conference in Vienna, the Austrian government promised to develop a nuclear weapons ban treaty.  The result was the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which was adopted in 2017.   Because of this accomplishment, ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in that year.  But it was not until October of this year that enough nations had  ratified the treaty. The  Ban Treaty will enter into force on January 22, 2021.

            So, what are we celebrating?  Not one of the dozen nuclear-armed countries that possess the thousands of nuclear weapons has signed onto the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Because they are not signatories to the Treaty, neither the US nor Russia, nor any of the other nuclear armed nations, can be called before the Hague Tribunal because they are in violation of international law.  However, according to Dr. Ira Helfand of the ICAN Steering Committee and many other experts, this Treaty will give the rest of the world a “powerful tool” to stigmatize the nuclear armed nations that own these weapons as well as the corporations that build them. We all have a role to play in doing the persuading.

Although Ground Zero has persisted in its resistance to nuclear weapons over the years, the general public has largely forgotten them since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980’s. However, recently there is growing awareness of nuclear weapons and the dangers they pose to humanity.  More people are waking up to the reality that the possibility of nuclear war is greater than it has ever been.  A wider grass roots campaign called “Back from the Brink” has been endorsed by many cities and several state legislatures.  They call for the US to lead a global effort to take such actions as:

●      Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first

●      Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack

●      Taking the U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert

●      Cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons

●      Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear weapons.

Therefore, while we are celebrating, we will take action to use the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as leverage to pressure our government to come into compliance with international law and with its moral obligation to rid humanity of its gravest threat.

Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Op-Eds

Dr. Joseph Berkson

Op-Ed for the day of TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) Ratification

When will we listen and act on extreme peril to our country? On October 24, the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons today should be a warning to the United States and the other eight countries who possess them. The majority of Americans believe any use of these weapons of mass destruction is unacceptable. The 84 signatories to this treaty wish to completely ban nuclear weapons. On October 24, the 50th country ratified the treaty. By the rules of the treaty it will be in force by international law in 90 days. By ratifying this treaty, the signing countries agree not to acquire or threaten the use of these bombs which threaten our survival in this country and worldwide. 

The treaty is the result of decades of  frustration that the nuclear powers have not disarmed, despite pledges to do so in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 

The world’s nuclear arsenal is nearly 13,500 warheads, the U.S. has 5,800.   

Worse, Russia and the United States have recently deployed “low yield” nuclear weapons, sometimes called “tactical” nuclear weapons. Some politicians and military leaders look at these weapons as more usable, but that is an extremely dangerous idea which could lead to a large-scale nuclear weapon exchange. It has been the policy of U.S. administrations for the past 18 years that the U.S. reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first, not just in retaliation for a nuclear attack on us, but also if a conventional war is getting “out of control.” These “limited” nuclear weapons make us less secure. 

Nuclear weapon accidents have happened here in the U.S., also in Russia. As Eric Schlosser wrote in his definitive book, Command and Control, an accidental liquid fuel explosion of a Titan missile in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980 was an extremely close call. One military officer was killed and 20 more injured, the nuclear warhead was missing for hours, and would have detonated if a single simple switch had failed. There have been innumerable incidents of near misses with our nuclear arsenal over the past 75 years. 

The world celebrates the International Day for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on Sept. 26. This commemorates a 1983 incident when a nuclear war was almost launched due to malfunctions in the Soviet early warning system. The Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, was told there was an incoming missile strike seen on radar, and then told five more missiles were on their way. He was obliged to launch a retaliation, but he disobeyed orders. He decided it could be a false image and did not launch the Russian nuclear weapons. Now he is celebrated as “the man who saved the world,” with the commemorative holiday on the date of the incident.

The results of an actual nuclear exchange in war are so horrible, many of us become  emotionally traumatized contemplating these results: hundreds of millions (or more) people dead, environmental collapse of crops for over a decade, shortages of most goods. We cannot prepare for or prevent nuclear catastrophe unless we think about the unthinkable. 

How do we act on this “low probability” risk? As a nation, we have not yet faced our current climate crisis, and had a bad record of acting early on the current COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine hearing that nobody could have predicted the coronavirus pandemic, if you wrote a book and gave talks warning about it 5 years ago. That happened to Bill Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, and Michael T. Osterholm, epidemiologist and infectious disease expert. They both predicted a pandemic with a new or “novel” virus to which nobody would have immunity. Many infectious disease and public health doctors warned we were not prepared for it. Bill Gates told Donald Trump in December, 2016 that we needed to get ready for dealing with a pandemic. 

It is clear we are not good at dealing with nuclear dangers either. Albert Einstein sent a telegram in 1946, warning, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Let’s overcome this tendency to do nothing about impending risk, by making real changes in policy and act. We must start taking seriously the threat of the collapse of our country and human civilization if nuclear weapons are used. The best way to improve our security is for our country to negotiate now with other nuclear powers to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons. 

Dr. Dave Hall

Tired of COVID-19? Tired of communities burned to the ground? Tired or smoke-filled summers? These are harbingers of our growing susceptibility to natural disasters fueled by a warming planet and indolent efforts globally to arrest the major causes. 

But these tragedies and inconveniences will pale before even a tiny nuclear disaster. 

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received the 50th ratification vote from a member nation, on October 24, 2020 meaning that it will go into effect in 90 days. It’s powerful condemnation of nuclear weapons, but it’s still just a formality until nations like ours with nuclear weapons acknowledge the world’s condemnation of their dangerous arsenals. 

History can teach how important it is to recognize the harms that we are courting by building and possessing nuclear weapons. 

You may remember the Chernobyl nuclear reactor incident. Well, the Soviet Union had three major disasters well before Chernobyl that warn us what disregard for nuclear consequences will cost us. 

The Techa River near their plutonium production plant became uninhabitable. They evacuated hundreds of villages after the river residents had been radiologically contaminated for years. When ? a delegation from Washington Physician for Social Responsibility? Or who? visited there in 1993, our geiger counter buzzed at a rate extreme enough to give a child cancer in three to four months. Russian officials dumped high level nuclear waste in the river after filling single shell tanks like we have at Hanford. Then in 1957 one of those tanks exploded like one of ours nearly did and there was a 180 kilometer plume that created a “nuclear preserve” that was still uninhabitable when we were there. 

But that wasn’t all. Officials  had been dumping hot nuclear waste in Lake Karachay, which like the Dead Sea, had no outlets. Safe place to put it, right? Well a drought and windstorm in 1968 dropped the lake level and the windstorm dispersed radioactive sediment from the exposed lake bed over a huge downwind plume that created another “nuclear preserve.”  Along with nuclear testing and engineering use of nuclear explosives to build canals and the like, Soviet physicians calculated that 15% of the Soviet landmass was radiologically contaminated at levels unsafe for human life. All three disasters were as big or bigger than Chernobyl. 

We in the United States are lucky our country has the wealth to manage nuclear waste better. But we, too, have huge downwind contamination from nuclear testing and nuclear waste. The Hanford Reservation in Eastern Washington is the largest Superfund site in the Western Hemisphere. That’s where we processed uranium to create plutonium for the Nagasaki atomic bomb. There are 177 nuclear waste tanks there and more than half of them are leaking radioactivity toward the Columbia River. Uranium mining on Native American land near Spokane and throughout Arizona has left thousands of Native American workers with multiple health problems. Same for U.S. servicemen who were detailed to witness nuclear tests in the 1940s and ’50’s. 

So that’s a brief summary of what happens during the production of nuclear weapons, and it pales by comparison to what has already happened when nuclear weapons are exploded.

The U.S. has tested atomic and hydrogen bombs on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb every day for 12 years and whole communities, like on the Techa River, had to be relocated. Radiological contamination from the Nevada Test Site reached Troy, New York. The Soviets had similar testing contamination from Novaya Zemlya in the arctic and Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. 

That brings us to the Damocles sword that hangs over all of us every day. In the 1960s the U.S. plan for responding to a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union called for destroying both Russia and China at the calculated cost of 600 MILLION lives lost. 

Despite all the efforts at reining in nuclear proliferation, we still have 15,000 nuclear weapons shared between nine nuclear nations with 90% held by the U.S. and Russia. We in the Puget Sound region live within 20 to 50 miles of the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Roughly a thousand nuclear weapons roam the world’s oceans on our Trident warships home based at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on Hood Canal. 

If any one of these thousands of nuclear weapons is used in perceived hostility against a country allied with Russia or the U.S., retaliation designed to mutually destroy the aggressor is the threatened war plan of response. India and Pakistan have fought five wars already and both possess atomic bombs sufficient to block the sun with fallout and debris and starve out billions of people. 

The notion that “fire and fury” is in any way sane exposes the ignorance of real consequences of using nuclear weapons.  It’s on all of us to demand diplomatic reduction of these horrific weapons toward elimination. Soon we will see these weapons outlawed by the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. If we don’t stand up now to ensure the treaty comes into full force, none of us will be standing if this genie is unleashed. 

Ash Maria

The 50th Country Just Ratified the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – What Now?

I am writing this letter to both celebrate a monumental step in nuclear disarmament, as well as make a plea on behalf of young folks everywhere. Having attended Shorecrest High School and grown up in Lake Forest Park, I am now a current first-generation student at Pomona College in Claremont, California hoping to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. program in Medical Anthropology. Instead of college classes over Zoom, I instead chose to spend my fall semester supporting Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility’s anti-nuclear weapon advocacy work. With October 23rd’s historic milestone of 50 countries ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), I wanted to share from a pre-med student’s perspective the importance of acting upon this moment’s momentum to best ensure the health and safety of nuclear-affected communities in our country.

As you may be aware, in 2020 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have determined we are “100 seconds to midnight”, the closest the clock has ever been to “doomsday” in the organization’s 75-year history. Given the threats of present climate change and potential nuclear war amplified by corrupt political desires and technology-enabled propaganda, we as a global people are closer to the eradication of civilization than even at the height of the Cold War (for reference, the clock was 120 seconds to midnight in 1953 after the U.S. and U.S.S.R. tested thermonuclear weapons for the first time). 

These growing threats have largely been met with near meaningless measures taken by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, especially China, Russia, and the U.S. Knowing that leading world powers would not adequately step up to the challenge of maintaining a habitable Earth, on July 7, 2017, a UN conference adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Now with the 50th country ratifying it, the treaty will begin to take effect in 90 days, a momentous step in the global denuclearization effort. This historic treaty was led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for their work. 

The TPNW was created with both the short and long-term goals of providing a legal instrument to hold countries accountable in denuclearization efforts and fully abolishing these weapons of mass destruction respectively. According to ICAN’s website, the treaty specifically “prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory…[as well as] assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities.”

Even if the importance of this unprecedented treaty’s ratification is not something that can be overstated, there are still other aspects of the anti-nuclear struggle that need to be urgently addressed. All of the nuclear-weapons states have to join the rest of the world in the effort to ban the bomb. 

Here in the U.S., we have communities that have/are at high risk of experiencing nuclear violence that we must prioritize political and social support for going forward. These include the Marshallese and other Pacific Islander Compact of Free Association (COFA) migrants whose homelands were used for nuclear weapons testing, people living in the area around Washington State’s Hanford Site, and those inside the “nuclear sponge” regions of the American heartland.

In 1996 under a federal “welfare reform” act, COFA communities lost their access to Medicaid leading to poverty-driven extreme health disparity. Greatly impacted by COVID-19, diabetes, and high cancer rates caused by radiation poisoning from U.S. nuclear weapon tests in the Marshall Islands, Marshallese activists and allies have worked tirelessly to both cleanup remaining nuclear waste on the atolls and regain access to federal healthcare programs.

Cleaning up the Hanford Site in southern Washington State is critical. Many experts have deemed it a ticking time bomb with the potential to far exceed Chernobyl’s nuclear fallout. The facility storing 56 million gallons of radioactive material originally designed for the atomic bombs is decaying, the only way to prevent this impending disaster is to move the waste from wet to dry storage. Without our action, the area around the Hanford Site would become uninhabitable for upwards of 800 years.

The central states of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming are considered by the U.S. military as our “nuclear sponge”. The Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) stored in these states serve the primary tactical use of absorbing any incoming attacks, greatly putting nearby communities at risk. Instead of removing the bait for Russia and protecting civilians, the U.S. has recently decided to replace and modernize our ICBMs via a brand new $13.3 contract with Northrop Grumman to be completed in 2029 and remain until 2075.

Nuclear weapons pose one of the greatest public health crises globally. It is a public health issue that may not pose an everyday threat to many of us (although an accident, miscalculation, or unhinged leader could change that instantly), but is inseparably intertwined with ones that do such as the climate crisis and economic inequity. If there is one issue young people like me cannot afford to be defeatist on it is this –the fate of our species is depending on it. This November I not only implore you to vote for candidates against nuclearization, but also to use the momentum of the TPNW’s ratification to educate others about these issues, organize anti-nuclear lobbying events in your area, and take part in organizations led by frontline communities like the Marshallese, who do live with the dangers of nuclear weapons every day

Dan Worthen

The  U. N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has just been ratified by the governments of 50 nations – a key threshold in the treaty’s advancement toward becoming international law. The treaty “prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory.” In a year full of bad news, this is most welcome.

The nations currently possessing nuclear weapons have made it clear that they will not recognize the treaty. However, the ability to stigmatize those nations – officially singling them out as rogue states operating outside the norms of the world community – is perhaps the treaty’s greatest power. The nine nations must be named: the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Most of us (those born after 1945) have been living under the threat of nuclear annihilation for our entire lives. I remember participating in “duck and cover” drills in primary school in the early 1960s. And I recall, during that same period, seeing the fear in my parents’ eyes as they watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold.

Today I see that same fear in the eyes of the younger generation — but the fear is not about nuclear annihilation, which, for most of them, is an issue that has faded tragically into the background. Their fear is about that other great existential peril: climate change.  

My own children are young adults. One is in college and the other just had a baby.  They are good, purposeful people whose lives brim with possibility, and they deserve every opportunity to live full, happy lives. But, more than with past generations, the earth’s accelerated warming is forcing them to face an ominous, uncertain future. 

Sadly, the continuing presence of nuclear weapons on our planet makes that future exponentially more ominous. Indeed, in an awful twist, it makes the future more, not less, certain, for this I know: The longer nuclear weapons exist, the more inevitable is their use. It is how the world works. Sooner or later, the dumb luck that has helped to save us since 1945 is going to run out. 

How will it happen? The spark will come intentionally as a result of a flareup between nations, or it will strike as a sudden accident — a bolt out of the blue — through a false alarm or technical malfunction. Then, as nearly all creditable response/retaliation scenarios tell us, the spark will ignite a conflagration that initiates nuclear winter and plunges the world into darkness.

The inevitability is stunning. It constrains us to act with all urgency to eliminate the hazard. If we do not, once the event takes place, the notion of combating climate change will lapse into sudden, archaic irrelevancy as nuclear winter fast tracks humanity down the road to extinction.

Nuclear weapons and climate change share this in common: They each threaten the entire planet-wide ecosystem and our own species’ survival. But climate change, vast in scope, is as intractable as it is global; there is nothing we can do to stop it in its tracks. 

Nuclear weapons, in that sense, are different. While they have proven extraordinarily difficult to contend with since their inception 75 years ago, they are a puzzle that can be solved in the comparatively near term. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, I believe, is the place to start. It presents a feasible way forward in humanity’s quest to bury something that should have never seen the light of day. Therein lies hope.

WPSR's Summer 2020 Newsletter

The Summer 2020 WPSR Newsletter is full of articles, news, and updates on our recent work, focused on our response to the COVID crisis, the polemic of racism and police violence, and our ongoing work to address the public health threats of nuclear weapons, climate change, and economic inequity.

WPSR Statement on George Floyd

This week, our national organization, PSR, issued a statement on police violence and the killing of George Floyd, on behalf of the national network of PSR chapters. WPSR echoes these words, condemning violence and racism in all its forms, and mourning the death of George Floyd and all people of color who have suffered and died at the hands of a racist and overmilitarized police. 

“PSR stands with health professionals who have long argued that police violence and systemic racism are a public health issue. We call on PSR members, who are devoted to fighting climate change and eliminating the threat posed by nuclear weapons, to be every bit as active in dismantling institutional racism in their communities. No just solution to the climate crisis or the nuclear threat will be possible unless we do so.”

The full PSR statement can be found here:ttps://www.psr.org/blog/2020/06/01/statement-on-the-killing-of-george-floyd/

Washington PSR will continue our commitment to work towards equity and social justice as an organization, and through our programs. As an organization working for climate justice, economic justice, and nuclear justice, we are obligated to speak out against systemic racism and to work with our coalition and community partners, and other PSR chapters, to help dismantle systems of white supremacy that perpetuate violence and against all forms of discrimination, injustice, and harm against people of color.

We recognize that climate justice, economic justice, and nuclear justice cannot be achieved without racial justice. We also recognize that statements are not enough to effectuate the change needed, and that - as with the major challenges to health that we work to address on a daily basis - action is required at every level of our unjust society. As such, WPSR is committed to go beyond these words, and to take concrete actions that will help dismantle the inherently inequitable systems that stand in the way of a peaceful, healthy, and just society.  We call for fundamental reform of our police forces, which needs to include demilitarization, training in implicit bias, and early decisive disciplinary action for acts of racism.  We call for redirection of funding for policing toward efforts to build resilient communities and break down economic inequity as methods to reduce violent crime. 

We stand in solidarity with the protesters and urge our supporters to do the same. We also recognize the additional risks protesters are incurring in the midst of a pandemic, and we strongly encourage all to protect their own health and the health of their loved ones at home by maintaining a safe distance from one another and wearing masks and washing hands frequently, so that this important act of protest does not result in more sickness and death from the virus.

If you are able, we urge you to support the organizations working on-the-ground right now to fight racial injustice. Our movements are inextricably linked, and our mission to build an equitable and inclusive climate movement is only possible if we continue to fight for the health, safety, opportunity, and basic human rights of all people.

Finally, as an organization dedicated to finding policy solutions to the greatest threats to human health, we encourage you to visit https://www.joincampaignzero.org to learn about - and become an advocate for - proven policy approaches to reducing police violence.

Washington State Unready to Take a Stand Against Nuclear Weapons: The Path Foward for the Movement is Clear

By : Lauren Zawacki and Carly Brook

Unfortunately, the full state Senate isn’t going to vote before the end of session on March 6th on a measure that would have asked Congress and the President to establish smarter policies that would reduce the chances of nuclear war. 

As of February 24, the Senate Joint Memorial 8006, was officially set aside after the powerful Senate Rules Committee took no action on it, indicating that the bill will not become law during this legislative session. We thank the co-sponsors, Rep. Gael Tarleton and Sen. Bob Hasegawa whose courageous leadership raised the issue of nuclear weapons in the legislature for the second time in recent history, offering the opportunity for Washington State to take a stand against one of the most serious threats to human survival. While this is disappointing news for both our coalition, as well as many other grassroots movements across the nation aiming to prevent nuclear war, there were still tremendous gains for the movement. And, encouragingly for the future, it did receive a recommendation for passage by the full Senate from a majority of the State Government, Tribal Relations and Elections Committee.

SJM 8006 urges that Washington “has a local responsibility to lead a national conversation about reducing and eliminating the threat of nuclear war and revamping our federal strategy.” The memorial goes on to urge the U.S. to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by laying out several policies aimed at reducing the extreme risks from these weapons as well as reducing our arsenals. If passed by the Washington Legislature, these memorials would be sent to President Trump and the leaders of both houses of Congress. Two of the memorial’s key sections urged a commitment by the United States never to be the first to use nuclear weapons and the creation of a system to ensure that a President doesn’t act alone in launching a nuclear attack. 

Since the last legislative session in 2019, when the House and Senate joint memorials were introduced for the first time, the Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition has gained 50 member organizations. Additionally, our coalition diversified its support by engaging national and local organizations 350 Seattle, Women’s Action for New Directions, and the Union of Concerned Scientists to add their voices to the fight against nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, the joining of different grassroots movements signifies that nuclear weapons and war is not an isolated issue, but a complex problem that affects a broad spectrum of problems such as health, the environment, human rights, and income inequity. Making these connections only strengthens our argument and makes lawmakers, and the general public, more aware and supportive of urgently addressing our efforts to prevent nuclear war.

The Coalition also received an outpouring of support and action taken by these organizations and their partners. Thanks to everyone’s support, our coalition met with over 10 legislators, sent over 50 call to action emails, made hundreds of phone calls and had a record number of individuals testify at the general hearing on February 7, in which 12 individuals testified. 

That said, neither SJM 8006 and its House companion measure, passed in the 2019 or 2020 legislative sessions. Bills of more immediate r relevance and significance to voters and the legislators were prioritized over the nuclear weapons joint memorials in this year’s short legislative session. We want to thank our endorsing organizations, partners and constituents who helped to grow the grassroots movement and helped educate and elevate the issue amongst lawmakers and the general public.  We can claim the victory that more people are now educated about the dangers of nuclear war, more people are engaged in the movement and we have gained new friends in this struggle, even though we were not able to pass the joint memorials in the Washington Legislature this time. 

What should be the path forward for Washington State’s growing anti-nuclear weapons movement? 

1. Pass city level and county level “Back from the Brink” resolutions, embodying the original points of the two memorial measures. That would give support to the national Back from the Brink movement while building stronger support for future state resolutions.

2. Advocate to you Representatives and Senators in Congress to take urgent action to support No First Use and the extension of the New START treaty — policies that need our attention now to lessen the dangers and possibility of a nuclear war

3. Speak out about the deployment of “low-yield” nuclear warheads which increase the likelihood of a conventional war escalating to a nuclear war. Tell your Member of Congress to reverse their deployment to submarines in Puget Sound at the Trident Submarine Base in Kitsap County.

4. Grow the movement.Talk to your neighbors, community institutions, schools, and organizations about the threats of nuclear weapons and the history of resistance here in Washington State and urge your organizations to join the 50 member organizations of the Washington Against Nuclear Weapons Coalition to build our fighting capacity in 2020 to abolish nuclear weapons.

As New Nuclear Arms Race accelerates, WA Legislatures can reduce risk of nuclear war

OLYMPIA, WA. - On Friday February 7th at 12:30PM Sen. Hasegawa and the Committee on State Government, Tribal Relations and Elections passed Senate Joint Memorial 8006, “Requesting that Congress establish more checks and balances to reduce the possibility of nuclear war”, out of committee. Now in the coming weeks, the Senate needs to pull the bill from Rules Committee onto the Senate floor for a vote!

With this memorial -- and it’s partner HJM 4008 led by Rep. Tarleton in the House -- Washington State Legislators are stepping up to say no more to nuclear proliferation and are standing up to nuclear war and the new arms race. 

SJM 8006 urges that Washington “has a local responsibility to lead a national conversation about reducing and eliminating the threat of nuclear war and revamping our federal strategy.” The memorial goes on to urge the U.S. to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by laying out several policies aimed at reducing the extreme risks from these weapons as well as reducing our arsenals. 

If passed by the Washington Senate (and House), these Memorials would be sent to President Trump and the leaders of both houses of Congress, urging action on nuclear dangers from the highest levels of Washington state government. Similar resolutions were passed in California and Oregon in 2019.

“We are fortunate to have this quality of leadership in our Washington Legislature that is willing to challenge the very dangerous status quo and address these policy issues that ultimately reside at the national level,” said Dr. Bruce Amundson, Vice President of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“People in Washington State find ourselves in a crossfire of the New Nuclear Arms Race, since the presence of nuclear-armed submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval base makes us a prime target in the case of a nuclear exchange,” said Carly Brook, Nuclear Weapons Abolition Organizer for Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The Washington Against Nuclear Weapons coalition, comprised of over 50 organizations across Washington, and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 900 health professionals, strongly support passage of these Memorial statements, and commend our elected officials for their foresight and leadership in putting them forward in the 2019 Legislature.

The U.S. Assassination of Major General Qassem Suleimani Underscores the Urgent Need to Reenter the Iran Deal

Statement from Physicians for Social Responsibility National Executive Director, Jeff Carter

“The United States can and must pursue critical diplomatic measures to prevent war with Iran. 

Physicians for Social Responsibility urges the Trump administration to consult with Congress before engaging in any further offensive attack anywhere in and around the Persian Gulf, and to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). An armed conflict between the United States and Iran would likely be a humanitarian catastrophe. 

What’s more, the assassination of Suleimani has brought the world closer to a nuclear conflict, for two reasons:

First, this escalation of hostilities could be interpreted as a declaration of war. War is full of uncertainty, and could draw in others besides the U.S. and Iran, including nuclear-armed countries such as Israel and Russia. 

Second, in 2018, the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, an agreement that was working as planned to effectively and verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The assassination of Suleimani will likely bolster the arguments of those in Iran who advocate for Iran to work harder and faster to obtain them.”

This is how civilizations collapse from within

By Bruce Amundson, Vice President, WPSR

In December, Congress passed the 2020 military spending act, a grotesque $738 billion bill representing even $30 billion more than last year. Pentagon spending in 2019 is actually higher than it was at the peak of either the Korean or Vietnam conflicts. As fear of terrorism generated by the 9/11 attacks set the stage for 18 years of ill-advised military adventures, we have witnessed the relentless expansion of the military budget and, at least as disconcerting, the militarization of our foreign policy and our diplomatic face to the world.

The end of the Cold War resulted in the rarest of things: real cuts in the Pentagon budget. They hit hard enough that the weapons industry was forced into a series of mega-mergers, leaving only 5 major defense contractors, one of which is Boeing. These five firms now split roughly $100 billion in Pentagon contracts annually.

Why has it been so hard to reduce the Pentagon budget, regardless of the global security environment? The brute power of the arms industry lobby together with the seductive allure of military-industrial jobs in most Congressional districts have proved to cement the power of the military-industrial-congressional complex to continue to pour ever-increasing dollars into the defense budget.

The military itself has blindly adhered to a strategy of global dominance that’s essentially been on autopilot, no matter the damaging consequences of near-endless wars and preparations for more of them. In Africa, for example, our dominant presence in over 30 nations is the military, not our diplomatic corps.

Spending on the US nuclear weapons program further illustrates the problem. In spite of tenacious efforts by Washington Rep. Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, to introduce an amendment to the 2020 military bill to rein in spending on a dangerous new so-called low-yield nuclear warhead for the Bangor-based Trident submarines, this amendment was stripped out in the Senate.

As an organization of health professionals, here is what we see: the most urgent threats to the safety of the planet and to human health today are an overheating planet, nuclear war, epidemics, poverty and destructive levels of inequality. None of these threats can even remotely be addressed by military means.

The militarization of our face to the world together with the squandering of trillions of dollars that could do so much good for this country have implications for every resident and city in this land, a country awash in unmet human needs and crumbling infrastructure.

It’s time citizens insist that our elected officials stop this madness. This is how civilizations collapse from within.

$738 billion dollar military budget includes funding to deploy "Gateway Nuclear Weapons"

In moves with potentially horrific consequences, Congress is supporting the Trump administration’s push to escalate America’s ability to start and fight a nuclear war—making a nuclear holocaust more likely—and fully funding the administration’s request to go on a nuclear weapons buying spree. These choices make American less safe.

Foremost among the dangerous aspects of this bill is its support for the deployment of the Trump administration’s new W76-2 nuclear warhead—a lower yield Trident submarine weapon designed to make potential adversaries believe the United States will use it. These weapons are a gateway to nuclear catastrophe.

WPSR congratulates House Democrats, who made a valiant effort to push back against this dangerous line of thinking. Under the leadership of House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith, the House NDAA barred deployment of the dangerous W76-2 warhead and made a number of sensible but modest cuts to the full-scale nuclear arsenal replacement plan.

By deploying the W76-2, the United States will tell Russia and the rest of the world that the Trump administration believes a limited nuclear war can be fought and remain controlled. Such thinking is dangerous in the extreme. Once the nuclear threshold has been crossed, no one can have any confidence that the conflict will not escalate to large-scale nuclear use. And in an all-out war between the United States and Russia, tens of millions would die in a few hours. Climate effects from the soot put into the atmosphere by these weapons could kill many millions more worldwide due to severe food shortages.

Beyond that, the final NDAA provides full funding for every element of the Trump administration’s $1.7 trillion, 30-year plan to replace the entire current, oversized nuclear arsenal with a host of more lethal weapons.

The NDAA does nothing to rein in out-of-control military spending, prevent unconstitutional war against Iran, or prevent the deployment of gateway nuclear weapons.

But House and Senate Republicans unequivocally supported every piece of the Trump administration’s dangerous nuclear weapons plan. Their full-throated endorsement is ramping up the growing nuclear arms race with Russia. Regrettably, Senate Democrats did not join their House colleagues in united opposition to the administration’s plans. As a result, nearly every positive step taken by the House was reversed.

In view of the failure of safe and sane nuclear weapons amendments to pass the final bill, all members of Congress should carefully consider their vote on the NDAA. Will this be a vote to oppose a new nuclear arms race, to oppose weapons that make fighting a nuclear war easier, and to support a more secure, less dangerous world? Or will this be a vote to further expand our nuclear arsenals and accelerate the nuclear arms race?

Senate Joint Memorial on Preventing Nuclear war to be reintroduced

Oct 2019 UPDATE:

The WA House and Senate Joint Memorial on preventing nuclear war will be reintroduced in the 2020 legislative session, providing a new opportunity to pass legislation that voices our state’s staunch opposition to the production, deployment, and use of nuclear weapons. Stay tuned for ways you can support this bill and make sure our state’s stance on nuclear weapons is known.

Feb 2019:

Washington Against Nuclear Weapons had a great day on Friday, February 22nd. We are delighted that the Senate State Government, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee voted in favor of Senate Joint Memorial 8006, which now sends it to the Rules Committee.

Ten individuals representing Washington Against Nuclear Weapons and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility testified in support of SJM 8006, a measure that – if passed – would send a request to President Trump and the leaders of both houses of Congress to take specific actions to pull our country back from the brink of nuclear war.

We are grateful to Sen. Hasegawa for introducing SJM 8006 and to Rep. Tarleton who introduced HJM 4008 in the House. We are also grateful to the co-sponsors of these Memorials. And we are especially grateful to all of the individuals who attended Friday’s hearing, testified in support of SJM 8006, and/or contacted their legislators urging support of this measure.

One memorable moment on Friday was Senator Hasegawa’s introduction of SJM 8006 to the Committee. When he mentioned the large collection of nuclear weapons housed in Washington State at Bangor, the gasp in the crowded room was audible. That gasp reminds us of what an important opportunity this is to educate our fellow Washingtonians about the immense risk we face. Onward in the quest for a safer future!

WPSR Endorses NO on I-976

WPSR strongly opposes the I-976 ballot initiative. This new Tim Eyman’s Initiative, which will go to votes on November 5th, would devastate the region’s transportation system, which is under strain an in need of continued investment that will allow it to improve, and grow to serve our growing region and the needs of those who most rely on our transportation infrastructure. That includes everyone, even drivers.

This initiative would massively cut funding - by repealing funding provisions that have already been approved - for a wide range of road, rail, and transit projects, all across the state. Cutting this funding will impact everyone’s safety, and destroy our infrastructure that connects people to each other and to their places of work.

Learn more, spread the word, and take action with us! https://www.no976.org/

WPSR's Summer 2019 Newsletter

Click anywhere to view the full, interactive version of our recent newsletter.

Shortgevity and the Road Back to a Longer, Healthier Life

by Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, Chair, WPSR Economic Inequity & Health Task Force

(Photo: Dean Chahim/Flickr/cc)

Most people are concerned with their health.  We are bombarded with what to do to keep ourselves healthy as individuals.  What if that is not sufficient?  What if the society in which we live matters more for our health than what we do to keep ourselves healthy? 

The health of people in a country can be measured by how long they live, life expectancy.  Calculating this requires only that you know when someone is born and when they die.  All rich countries and many not-so-rich calculate this yearly.  Many mortality rates can similarly be calculated from this information.  

This century, the United States stands with Syria as the countries where mortality is going up and life expectancy is going down.  Last century this happened suddenly in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and in high AIDS-prevalent countries in Africa.

Since 2015 life expectancy has declined here every year instead of continuing to increase.  If health had continued to improve as expected, the excess deaths we’ve experienced is equivalent to eradicating deaths from motor vehicle crashes, other accidents, and homicide.  Our health decline is huge and yet Americans are mostly unaware of this carnage.

Maternal mortality, deaths of women from childbirth-related causes, has risen 50% in the last 15 years.  Back in 1951-53, we had the lowest rates of such deaths in the world.  Now almost 60 nations surpass us.  Adult mortality, ages 25 to 64, is similarly rising for all racial-ethnic groups in this country.  

Why is this happening?  We are not at war.  There is an opioid death epidemic but it explains only a small part of this seeming slaughter.  Much evidence suggests our increasing income and wealth inequality is a major part of this process, similar to what happened in Russia after the breakup only here the increase has been gradual over decades rather than happening suddenly there.  Our income inequality continues to increase despite many people saying this is not good for us.

The other finger points to a lack of support for early life.  Only two countries in the world do not grant a working pregnant woman paid time off after she has her baby.  One is, of course, the United States, and the other is Papua New Guinea.  We have the most child poverty of all rich nations.  Our government spends for remedial action on failing students, rather than putting resources towards early life.  For example, Sweden, one of the world’s longest-lived countries, spends more government money in the first year of life than in any subsequent year.  Early life expenditures have a great return on investment compared to those repairing broken men and women.  

While access to good medical care is important, it is not the driver of these fatalities.  We spend more on health care than the rest of the world combined.  Similarly for many health-related behaviors.  We have among the lowest rates of cigarette smoking of all rich nations.  Japan, the longest-lived has more than twice as many men smoking per capita than we do.

 Our health decline is not on the list of presidential issues that are being discussed and debated.  This was also the case after the 2013 Institute of Medicine report with the title that said it all before our health decline.  “U.S. Health in International Perspective:  Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.”  Things are considerably worse now.  This needs to become a national issue.  It is much more important than Medicare for All or other such discussed programs.  Yes, universal health care needs to be enacted but it won’t treat our health decline.

WPSR, through it's Economic Inequity Program, is taking on the responsibility of bringing these ideas to light, to eradicate shortgevity and get us back on the road to a longer healthier life.  Creating awareness of a problem is always the first step.  Then we need to change the economic structure of our society so there is more economic justice, and in turn, better health. 

WPSR Statement of Support for Health Justice for the Republic of the Marshall Islands

Her Excellency Dr. Hilda Heine, President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) discussing the Strategy for Nuclear Justice presented by the RMI’s National Nuclear Commission to the President and her Cabinet. Five of the co-authors of this statement participated in this presentation and discussion.

Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) has a long history of organizing against the threats to human health caused by nuclear weapons and nuclear war. As a physician-based organization, this WPSR statement acknowledges the profound health impacts experienced by the people of the Marshall Islands as a direct result of U.S. nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War, and calls on our organization, network, and policymakers to support the Marshallese people in their efforts to establish adequate healthcare for their communities, particularly cancer care. Today there is no oncologist or cancer center in the Marshall Islands and the lack of adequate healthcare means that the violence of U.S. nuclear weapons testing continues every day that people cannot access the care they need. Marshallese patients who migrate to Washington State and the U.S. legally are also in need of comprehensive and accessible cancer care. 

From 1946-1958, the United States Government detonated sixty-seven atomic and thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands when the islands were part of a trust territory administered by the United States. The weapons tests included the infamous Bravo shot on March 1, 1954. Bravo was the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and to this day remains the largest weapon ever detonated by the United States. Although the U.S. Government routinely evacuated downwind communities for tests as a protection measure, on the day that the U.S. Government detonated the Castle Bravo US hydrogen bomb, the U.S. Government purposefully decided not to evacuate or warn downwind communities about potential dangers. Following their exposures to fallout from Bravo, the U.S. Government enrolled residents of two downwind communities, Rongelap and Utrik, into a top secret medical experimentation program, Project 4.1, to study the effects of radiation exposure on human beings. U.S. Government weapons designers used data collected in the Marshall Islands to modify their weapons of mass destruction based on their understandings of the ways radiation exposure impacts human beings. 

For people exposed to acute levels of radiation in the Marshall Islands, they immediately experienced deep burns, in some cases down to the bone, hair loss, vomiting, diarrhea, and fevers. Parents were so overcome by their radiation sickness that they could not care for their own children calling them for help. Rather than provide medical care to the exposed populations during the immediate crisis, the U.S. Government brought them to an internment camp on Kwajalein to photograph the health impacts, and extract bone marrow, blood, skin and hair samples from the people. 

In the days and years following, U.S. Government doctors continued medical trips to the Marshall Islands to advance their research, and in some cases distributing placebos to avoid altering their study of the effects of radiation on human beings. Cancer, thyroid disorders, stunted growth, developmental delays, birthing anomalies and deaths are just some of the health issues experienced by communities, including those resettled or residing on islands with residual levels of radiation. 

Despite widespread exposure resulting from cumulative and long-term exposure to radiation from sixty-seven weapons, today the U.S. Department of Energy provides medical care to fewer than 100 people who resided downwind from just one of the tests, Bravo. The health impacts of 66 atmospheric tests are not factored into U.S.-provided healthcare. Furthermore, DOE provides medical care for only specific types of cancer. 

The Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands is overwhelmed by the healthcare needs of its population. The lack of existing infrastructure and human resources coupled with the immense cost of off-island referrals for cancer and other radiation-related illnesses exceeds the resources of the Marshall Islands. Many Marshallese migrate to Washington State, and the United States, in part, to access healthcare, including cancer care. 

Marshallese remain concerned about healthcare issues related to exposure to radiation from the tests as well as to communities resettled or living in areas with residual radiation. A recent L.A. Times article reported contemporary radiation levels in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) up to 1,000 times higher than Chernobyl and Fukushima. For decades the U.S. Government maintained that it cleaned up radiation from the ground zero testing area on Enewetak Atoll, and a segment of the Enewetakese population evacuated for the testing program today lives on an island adjacent to the nuclear waste facility, the Runit Dome. Recent studies by Drs. Nikolic and Emlyn Hughes from Columbia University reported in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, identified sources of radiation in the facility, and on Naen Island of Rongelap, that are from sources other than fallout from weapons, and opens the possibility of unreported and illegal dumping by the U.S. of radioactive waste from sources outside the Marshall Islands. Furthermore, the RMI Government recently learned from the U.S. Department of Energy that the Runit Dome contains less than 1% of the plutonium released on Enewetak and the remaining 99% is free flowing in the lagoon near where resettled populations reside; a “clean-up” did not take place. 

In August 2019, the National Nuclear Commission (NNC) of the Republic of the Marshall Islands submitted a Nuclear Justice Strategy to the President and Cabinet of the Marshall Islands outlining priorities to address nuclear justice in the islands. As the NNC notes, healthcare, and particularly cancer care, remains an urgent priority for the Marshallese people. 

From the start of the U.S. nuclear weapons testing program in 1946 until the present, Marshallese leaders have been vigorously demanding accountability from the United States, and pleading with the international community for assistance. Many of the most outspoken and effective Marshallese advocates on nuclear issues have died from cancer, including the late Minister Tony deBrum who helped file lawsuits with the International Court of Justice against nations with nuclear weapons, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 before his death. 

Government leaders and citizen activists from the Marshall Islands have asked WPSR for assistance to address the incredible health injustices in the Marshall Islands linked to activities by the U.S. Government for which the United States fails to take responsibility. WPSR has been making introductions and setting up meetings between the RMI’s NNC and the RMI’s Ministry of Health & Human Resources to consider opportunities for collaboration with cancer care providers, particularly in Washington State. Given that the nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States Government took place when the islands were a territory of the United States, Marshallese deserve the same standard of healthcare received by Americans citizens. The United States advanced its military, political and economic goals through its activities in the Marshall Islands, but the U.S. left an array of intergenerational health impacts and trauma that need attention. WPSR acknowledges the need for U.S. physicians and healthcare providers to support and join Marshallese efforts to secure cancer care access for Marshallese citizens residing in the islands, as well as in Washington State and beyond. 

Co-authored by: 

Her Excellency Dr. Hilda Heine, President of the RMI

The Honorable John Silk, RMI Minister of Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Kalani Kaneko, RMI Minister of Health & Human Resources

Rhea Moss-Christian, Chair, RMI National Nuclear Commission

Alson Kelen, Commissioner, RMI National Nuclear Commission

Holly Barker, Commissioner, RMI Nuclear  Commissioner, WPSR Nuclear Weapons Taskforce

Bruce Amundson, Co-Chair, WPSR Nuclear Weapons Taskforce

Joseph Berkson, Co-Chair, WPSR Nuclear Weapons Taskforce

Carly Brook, Nuclear Weapons Abolition Organizer, WPSR Nuclear Weapons Taskforce

David Anitok, Program Director, COFA Alliance National Network

Health professionals support a Green New Deal for Seattle

As conversations about a Green New Deal multiply and gain more prominence nationally, we’re excited to be part of a new effort focused on creating a city-wide Green New Deal for Seattle. This campaign led by 350 Seattle and local environmental justice organization Got Green urges City of Seattle leaders to eliminate climate pollution by 2030, address historic injustice in the city and its policies, and create thousands of living wage jobs.

WPSR is one of nearly 200 organizations to sign-on in support of Seattle’s Green New Deal. Four physician members of our Climate & Health Task Force have represented WPSR’s support for this initiative before City Hall in recent weeks. On August 13th, Dr. Annemarie Dooley, a nephrologist and active member of our Climate & Health Task Force, and Dr. Margaret Kitchell, a retired psychiatrist and longtime Task Force member, testified before City Council in support of the plan. Watch their testimonies here (starting at minute 11:00).

The Seattle Green New Deal is likely to include policies that will be introduced over time, including one that would prevent new fossil fuels in buildings (following the recent move by the City of Berkeley, CA to ban all new natural gas hookups). Most of our natural gas is derived from fracking, a clear and severe example of how fossil fuel extraction harms communities. Pollution from fracking is linked to low birthweights, neurological disorders, respiratory illness, harm to pregnant mothers, and even certain cancers. The combustion of gas inside our homes produces harmful indoor air pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and ultrafine particles. A policy like that just passed in Berkeley that promotes all-electric new construction in homes and buildings can also significantly support human health by improving indoor air quality. 

Last month, the American Medical Association, Academy of Family Physicians, the American Lung Association, and dozens more public health and clinician organizations developed a Call to Action on Climate, Health, and Equity. Rapidly transitioning away from natural gas in order to improve human health and reduce contributions to climate change was a key priority in their joint statement. 

Climate change is an existential threat to health, but as the medical journal The Lancet reminds us, the climate crisis and efforts to address it pose “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”. A Seattle Green New Deal effort led by communities most impacted by climate pollution and fossil fuel infrastructure is an important step towards realizing climate justice and supporting the health of all people.

Photos left to right: Dr. Dooley listens to testimony during a committee hearing on the Green New Deal resolution, Carly Brook, Dr. Ken Lans, and Dr. Rich Lipsky at City Hall for the Green New Deal campaign launch, and founder of Standing Rock Siox camp LaDonna Brave Bull Alard testifies before City Council as Dr. Dooley sits behind (credit: 350 Seattle).

Honoring the Victims of Hiroshima on the 74th Anniversary

By Laura Skelton

This week marks the 74th anniversary of the United States dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As we have every year since 1984, a diverse community gathered on August 6, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, at Green Lake to remember the more than 200,000 lives extinguished by those two bombings. Thursday, August 9, is the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, which has a direct connection to Washington State. It was here in Washington, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, that the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was manufactured.

It is vital that we remember the very real and devastating consequences of these weapons of mass destruction. Yet, it is even more important that we take steps to ensure that nuclear weapons do not claim any more lives. Important progress in the form of diplomacy and international treaties has been made since the wartime bombings of 1945. Unfortunately, it seems that we as a nation are departing from our longtime commitment to nuclear disarmament.

President Trump has pulled the United States out of the Iran Deal (a deal that would limit Iran’s ability to create a nuclear weapon, and one that experts agree was working). And just last week, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, which for decades has limited the possibility of land-based nuclear attacks. Other developments, such as the creation of a new class of “low-yield” nuclear weapons (today’s “low yield” weapons are equivalent to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima) and the plan to “modernize” the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, send a message to the rest of the world that we are nowhere close to relinquishing our nuclear firepower.

On a more hopeful note, there are policies being discussed that could dramatically improve the dangerous situation we find ourselves in. At the very least, the U.S. could finally adopt a “no first use” policy, which would match the Pentagon’s rhetoric that nuclear weapons are only needed for defensive reasons. If we only have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves, why would we ever need to launch them first? Senate bill 272 (introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren) and House bill 921 (introduced by Rep. Adam Smith from Washington’s 9th district; also co-sponsored by Rep. Denny Heck and rep. Pramila Jayapal) would help to de-escalate tensions that have been growing among nuclear states.

Before another year moves the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki further from our minds, let us honor the victims by taking real and meaningful actions to protect current and future generations.