Physicians For Social Responsibility Research Articles

Psychiatry Has Opened Its Eyes and Seen Our Environmental Issues

Psychiatry Has Opened Its Eyes and Seen Our Environmental Issues

The US Expert Community’s Role in the Formation of Nuclear Risk Reduction Policy During the Cold War

This paper addresses the role of the US expert community in shaping the nuclear risk reduction policy during the Cold War. The authors examines two ways of interaction between experts and the authorities: direct (through the participation of experts in various specialized committees and commissions, preparing analytical reports, and so on) and through communication with the civil society (publication of studies, forming public opinion on nuclear weapons. The authors pay special attention to the role of the Soviet-American expert dialogue in reducing the nuclear risks. The authors also examines the activities of public organizations (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Social Responsibility). As a result, the authors conclude that American experts shaped a discussion on the need to prevent nuclear war both within the government structures and civil society and maintained a dialogue with Soviet experts, which impacted nuclear risks perception. In addition, experts were sources of new ideas, which were subsequently put into practice by politicians.

Personal Accounts: Trying to Go Green!

Personal Accounts: Trying to Go Green!

Physicians’ Groups Say Nuclear Threats Are Even Greater Today Than in the Past

THROUGHOUT HISTORY, PHYSIcians and other health care workers have dealt with catastrophes, caring for the victims and often feeling helpless when a disaster is so great that many lives are instantly lost or are beyond saving. For decades, a group of physicians has been urging other clinicians, political leaders, and the public to imagine an event of apocalyptic proportions that could very possibly occur today. The cause would be nuclear war. In the early 1960s, the newly formed Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) published a comprehensive analysis of a clearly defined thermonuclear attack on the United States, including its human and ecologic consequences in a given area, specifically metropolitan Boston and southern New England (Ervin FR et al. N Engl J Med. 1962;266:1127-1137). In the Boston area alone, the analysis estimated, the blast, heat, and radiation from a thermonuclear attack would kill 1.4 million people and injure another 1.25 million. Of the latter, 1 million would die because no effective health care intervention would be possible. The authors urged physicians to educate people about such health dangers and to work to prevent them, as they do in other areas of preventive medicine (Sidel VW et al. N Engl J Med. 1962; 266[22]:1137-1145). The work by PSR grew into an international movement, leading to the 1980 founding of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), which recruited more than 150 000 doctors worldwide, held numerous international conferences that included US and Russian military leaders, met with world political leaders, and appeared on specially produced television programs broadcast throughout the former Soviet Union and the United States. In 1985, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to IPPNW for its service to humankind by spreading

Beate Kampmann: research advocate for children with tuberculosis

Beate Kampmann: research advocate for children with tuberculosis

Reviews: Why Ellen Rosskam's Holistic Approach is Necessary: Excess Baggage: Leveling the Load and Changing the Workplace, Joining Sustainable Design and Substainable Livelihood: Beyond Child's Play, Sustainable Product Design in the Global Doll-Making Industry, Emerging Theories: Healthy Aging: Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging with a Closer Look at Alzheimer's & Parkinson's Diseases

Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, with a Closer Look at Alzheimer's & Parkinson's Diseases, a report published by Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Science and Environmental Health Network (2008), explains emerging theories about contributors to and prevention of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Replete with graphics, maps, and diagrams, the report links a surprising number and variety of toxic exposures early in life to these neurodegenerative diseases diagnosed later in life. It also describes their relationships in what is described as the “Western disease cluster.” Evidence that good nutrition, physical activity, comfortable socio-economic status, and social and intellectual engagement throughout life are associated with a sturdier cognitive status late in life is presented.

Review: Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer by Helen Caldicott

Review: Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer By Helen Caldicott Reviewed by Umar Karim Mirza Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Pakistan. Helen Caldicott. Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. New York, NY: The New Press, 2006. 240 pp. ISBN: 978-1-59558-067-2. Hardcover, US$23.95. Helen Caldicott, a medical doctor, is the world's leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement. She is the co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a nominee for the Noble Peace Prize, and the winner of the 2003 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize. She is also the founder and President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) (http://www.nuclearpolicy.org), headquartered in Washington DC. She is the world's leading anti-nuclear voice. The book under discussion is the sixth one that she has authored. The first four chapters talk about the true costs of nuclear power, the health effects of radiation, and nuclear accidents. The burning issue of nuclear waste is explained next, followed by the author's insights on the latest nuclear reactors. Chapters 7 and 8 are devoted to a discussion of nuclear weapons proliferation. In the following chapter, the author concludes that renewable energy is the ultimate choice for humanity. The last chapter makes suggestions as to how we as individuals can contribute towards having a sustainable energy future. A detailed notes section follows. The index is rather brief.

Medical Groups Sue EPA Over Mercury Rule

SEVERAL NATIONAL HEALTH ORGAnizations have joined a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) alleging that the agency’s recently finalized rules on mercury emissions from power plants fail to protect children and fetuses from the toxin’s harmful health effects. The Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, NC, which is representing the organizations, filed a motion on June 14 to intervene in the ongoing lawsuit with the federal court of appeals in Washington, DC. The Physicians for Social Responsibility (Washington, DC), the American Public Health Association (Washington, DC), the American Nurses Association (Silver Spring, Md), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (Elk Grove, Ill) say that the mercury rule fails to meet the stringent standards the Clean Air Act sets for protecting public health. Kent Bransford, MD, presidentelect of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, called the legal proceedings histor ic . Although heal th organizations have long been active in advocating for strong public health policies, John Suttles, JD, who is representing the groups, explained it is highly unusual for health organizations to sue a government agency over a policy. Bransford likened the suit to efforts driven, in part, by the medical community to remove lead from household paints and gasoline in the 1980s after it was discovered that these sources contributed to high rates of lead poisoning in young children and developing fetuses. “We didn’t allow lead contamination to continue then; we can’t afford to allow more mercury contamination now,” he said. The lawsuit, initiated in May by the Sierra Club (San Francisco, Calif), Environmental Defense (New York, NY), and the National Wildlife Foundation (Reston, Va) claims that the EPA acted illegally in exempting coaland oilfired power plants from a list of industrial pollution sources governed by the strict pollution control requirements of the Clean Air Act. These plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States. Thirteen states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut,

Symposium Explores Children’s Environments

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Quoting naturalist John Muir, Michael Fischer, an environmental consultant formerly of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, introduced the 2004 Biennial Scientific Symposium on Children’s Health as Impacted by Environmental Contaminants by emphasizing that children are at the nexus of many of the connections found in nature. The symposium was designed to explore the interconnectedness of all elements of the environments in which children live, learn, and play, as well as ways to prevent environmental health risks. Hosted by the Children’s Environmental Health Institute (CEHI), the symposium was held 24–25 September 2004 at the McKinney Roughs Nature Park in Austin, Texas. The symposium was sponsored by the NIEHS, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Texas Medical Association, the Lower Colorado River Authority, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The interdisciplinary group of participants included researchers, pediatricians and other health professionals, social workers, nonprofit and advocacy group representatives, architects, and engineers. Topics ranged from the cellular level to the global. Because environmental toxicants are ubiquitous in air, water, food, and medications, said pediatrician and speaker Martin Lorin, we have seen a global rise in environmentally related diseases. However, in terms of the extent of the effects of exposures, he contended, we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. Participants agreed that to reduce harmful immediate and long-term effects of contaminants on children, we must study the interactions of environment, genes, developmental stage, and behavior. Discussions on endocrine disruptors (by John McLachlan of Tulane and Xavier Universities), developmental defects (by Richard Finnell of Texas A&M University), and respiratory disease (by Sharon Petronella of The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston), for example, addressed not just specific immediate health problems in children but also future trends: What kinds of adult diseases might be projected from fetal and childhood exposures? And how healthy are future populations likely to be? Potential remedies for environmentally related health problems may be as simple as taking folic acid to help prevent birth defects or having a physician take an environmental history to spot potential health risks. Technical (air quality samplers, hand-held immunosensors, microarrays) and demographic (geographic information systems, longitudinal studies) tools also can help identify and alleviate environmental health threats. The built environment—both materials and design—can significantly reduce children’s exposures to toxicants while creating safe and stimulating places to grow and learn. How do we replace the persistent bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals used to produce building materials with less-toxic alternatives? Gail Vittori, codirector of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, suggested several methods, among them eliminating interior finish materials that offgas volatile organic compounds, using recycled fly ash as a substitute for concrete, labeling building products more thoroughly, and using paints certified by the independent Green Seal standards program. Vittori also recommended that builders participate in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, a voluntary standard established by the U.S. Green Building Council for assessing and certifying high-performance sustainable buildings. In schools, inadequate ventilation, use of toxic pesticides and cleaners, offgassing from building materials and furnishings, and poor maintenance should be remediated to avoid increases in asthma, allergies, and other respiratory diseases. With an eye toward the future, the NIEHS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will continue to fund the Centers for Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research, according to NIEHS director Kenneth Olden. These centers promote multidisciplinary research and the translation and application of research to public health and clinical practice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aims to expand environmental public health tracking to a full nationwide network, collecting and analyzing data on hazards, exposures, and health effects. And Fernando Guerra, director of health with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, noted that the multi-agency National Children’s Study “will provide for the first time an opportunity for children and families to benefit from the cumulative evidence that will be assembled over twenty-five years, to better understand causal relationships from many different influences, including the environment.” The participants concluded that prevention, remediation, and attention to the long term are essential to addressing the unique vulnerabilities of infants and children. The challenge presented here is to blend research and clinical work with advocacy. Said CEHI director Janie Fields: “Together we are building a structure that bridges the health information gap between the medical, research, and environmental communities.”

The Physician's Role in Society: Enhancing the Health of Individuals and the Public

A physician discusses his experiences with Physicians for Social Responsibility and encourages others to become involved. Virtual Mentor is a monthly bioethics journal published by the American Medical Association.

Dispelling the specter of nuclear holocaust.

This “image of health” is the inverse of a peace image, but it is also a powerful reminder of how crusading anti–nuclear-war physicians and others in the public health community banded together in the midst of the Cold War to extend the peace and reduce the threat of the world’s disintegration into nuclear holocaust. The medical and public health campaign against the proliferation and possible use of nuclear weapons began in earnest in the late 1950s. Among its early leaders were psychiatrist Jerome Frank and pediatrician Benjamin Spock. In response to growing fear of radioactive fallout from the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons, the US Public Health Service started monitoring the nation’s milk supply in 1958.1 Tensions increased in the early 1960s, when President John Kennedy’s call for a massive US fallout shelter campaign intensified fears that the nation was preparing for nuclear war, and public concern rose to new heights in 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of an actual nuclear exchange.2 The most effective and influential response by the medical and public health community was led by a new organization formed in the early 1960s, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). This group published an influential book, The Fallen Sky: Medical Consequences of Thermonuclear War,3 and an important series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine.4,5 In 1963, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atmospheric or undersea nuclear testing. Concerns over radioactive fallout and nuclear weapons proliferation now abated, partially displaced by concerns over civil rights and the Vietnam War. Nuclear tensions returned at high pitch in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of the reasons for this was worry about the environmental dangers of nuclear power, a concern that greatly intensified in early 1979 with the Three Mile Island disaster. In addition, the Carter administration in its last years took a more aggressive nuclear posture, which included contingency planning for limited nuclear war.6 When the Reagan administration took office, anxieties multiplied as key officials issued statements about waging nuclear war “rationally.” In 1982, President Reagan proposed a $4.3 billion civil defense program centered on the “crisis relocation” of America’s urban population, which would supposedly allow 80% of the US population to survive a large-scale nuclear attack.2 Once again, physicians and others in the public health community mobilized against the threat of nuclear holocaust, this time on an international scale. PSR, which soon grew to more than 40 000 members, helped create International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Bernard Lown of Harvard, one of PSR’s original leaders in the 1960s, worked out a multinational governing structure for IPPNW that included PSR as the North American affiliate and in which he served as copresident with Yevgeny Chazov of the Soviet Union. IPPNW became influential worldwide and held a series of international conferences that drew participants from more than 30 countries. In its publications and at its conferences, IPPNW made a powerful case that there could be no adequate medical response in the aftermath of nuclear war and that prevention of nuclear engagement was the only meaningful medical and public health response to the threat. On December 10, 1985, Lown and Chazov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of IPPNW.

Medical Activism and Environmental Health

In the past decade, an environmental health movement has developed, and a number of medical social movement organizations (MSMOs) participate in efforts to promote sustainability and protect the environment. Physicians have organized as part of the larger peace and social justice movements since the mid-1800s. While these larger movements are the subjects of substantial historical and sociological research, there is no scholarship about contemporary MSMOs. In particular, contributions from such scholarship are noticeably absent in discussions of the current crisis of medical professionalism. Physicians and their medical organizations have limited understandings of social movements, activist roles, and medicine, as the profession has not found solidarity with other classes and groups in pursuit of environmental health, human rights, or universal access to health care. Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Human Rights, and Physicians for a National Health Program are important exceptions.

Aiming for prevention: International medical conference on small arms, gun violence and injury

IPPNW and Physicians for Social Responsibility, Finland organized an international conference on small arms and firearms injury in Helsinki from 28–30 September 2001, emphasizing the preventive medicine aspects of the issues discussed. This article describes the background to this conference and reports the work of IPPNW in following it up.

Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis

Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis

The developing brain and the environment: an introduction.

mental retardation: timing and thresholds; (italic)b(/italic)) endocrine dysfunction and developmental disabilities: dose and target implications; (italic)c(/italic)) attention-deficit disorder-ADHD and learning disabilities; and (italic)d(/italic)) new horizons: extending the boundaries. Support for the Rochester conference came from both public and private sources. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the EPA represented the federal government. The conference also received grants from several foundations: the Jennifer Altman Foundation, the Heinz Family Foundation, the National Alliance for Autism Research, the Violence Research Foundation, the Wacker Foundation, and the Winslow Foundation. The second of these conferences helped launch a new Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. It was held in New York City on 24-25 May 1999, and was convened specifically to consider the intersection between neurodevelopmental impairment, environmental chemicals, and prevention. Over 300 health scientists, pediatricians, and public health professionals examined the growing body of evidence linking environmental toxins to neurobehavioral disorders. The conference title was Environmental Influences on Children: Brain, Development, and Behavior. The conference began by reviewing well-known examples of deleterious effects of environmental chemicals, including lead and PCBs, on children's brains. The conferees then considered the potential impact of environmental chemicals on neurological disorders with particular focus on ADHD, autism, and Parkinson's disease. The inclusion of Parkinson's disease was intended to signal the notion that exposures in early life may have an influence on the evolution of neurological disease in later life. Support for the Mount Sinai conference came from the Superfund Basic Research Program (NIEHS); The Pew Charitable Trusts; the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany School of Public Health; the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Research (ATSDR); the Ambulatory Pediatric Association; Myron A. Mehlman, PhD; the National Center for Environmental Assessment (EPA); the National Center for Environmental Health (CDC); the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the Office of Children's Health Protection (EPA); Physicians for Social Responsibility; The New York Academy of Medicine; The New York Community Trust; and the Wallace Genetic Foundation. The impact of environmental toxins on children's health has become a topic of major concern in the federal government. Eight new research centers in children's environmental health have been established in the past 2 years with joint funding from EPA and NIEHS. Clinical units that specialize in the treatment of children with environmentally induced illness have been developed across the nation with grant support from ATSDR. The American Academy of Pediatrics has just published its (italic)Handbook of Pediatric Environmental Health (/italic)((italic)17(/italic)), the "Green Book," which is available to pediatricians throughout the Americas. Children's environmental health has climbed to a critical position as we launch the new millennium. This monograph marks a significant milestone in the evolution of this emerging discipline.

Changing times: reflections on a professional lifetime: an interview with Paul Beeson. Interview by Richard V. Lee.

Paul Bruce Beeson is a child of the American frontier, the younger son of a dedicated general practitioner. Dr. Beeson's adventure was academic medicine; he studied at McGill University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Rockefeller Hospital in New York, and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He became the Professor and Chair of the departments of medicine at Emory University and Yale University, and then, in Oslerian fashion, was appointed Nuffield Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. His legacy is his pupils, a Who's Who of 20th-century medicine. Dr. Beeson embodies the caring mission of medicine. He prefers to emphasize the patient-physician relationship and the social obligations of medicine; for example, Beeson was a founding member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. It seemed entirely appropriate that his memories and thoughts about 20th-century medicine, which he experienced and exemplified, should be a feature of the first issue of Annals in the year 2000.

Institutions:Physicians for Social Responsibility

Institutions:<i>Physicians for Social Responsibility</i>

Report says herbicides foul drinking water

Some 14 million Americans are routinely exposed to agricultural weed killers in their drinking water, charges a report, Tap Water Blues, released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) at a press conference last week in Washington, D.C. The contamination is particularly acute from April through August in the Midwest, says the report. Each spring farmers apply to their fields about 150 million lb of five herbicides analyzed in the report—alachlor, atrazine, cyanazine, metolachlor, and simazine. A substantial portion of these herbicides—often in combination—run off with rain and ultimately flow out of taps in millions of midwestern homes, said Richard Wiles, EWG vice president and principal author of the report, at the press conference. As a result, Wiles points out, 3.5 million people in 120 cities and towns face cancer risks 10 to 100 times higher than the federal benchmark of one additional cancer case per million persons exposed ...

Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment

Ed Eric Chivian, Michael McCally, Howard Hu, Andrew Haines MIT Press, £14.25, pp 240 ISBN 0-262-53118-6 There is a real danger that concern for the environment will turn to apathy. Critical Condition, a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility, is therefore to be welcomed because it takes a fresh approach - examining the impact of environmental change on human health. Physicians for Social Responsibility shared the 1985 Nobel peace prize with International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, for educating the public about the medical consequences of nuclear war. It is appropriate that …

Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment, A Report by Physicians for Social Responsibility

During the past 20 years three societal issues emerged that have concerned many physicians greatly: the prospect of nuclear war and its potential impact on the population; the threat posed by industrialization to our physical environment and biosphere; and the effects of environmental chemicals and other physical hazards on the people who worked with them or might be exposed to their residues in air, food, or water. While physicians have contributed greatly to public education and political progress in each of these arenas, there has been surprisingly little interchange among these activists, nor any attempt to find common themes with potential for greater professional awareness and participation. In Critical Condition researchers and advocates from each of these perspectives have joined forces to define a common ground for physicians interested in the environment: impacts of environmental disturbances on human health. It is in this context that this small volume can best