Nuclear Weapons: The Final Pandemic Preventing Proliferation and Achieving Abolition Medicine and Nuclear War Victor W. Sidel Distinguished University Professor of Social Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Medicine and Nuclear War Victor W. Sidel, MD Former Co-President, IPPNW Distinguished University Professor of Social Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine Adjunct Professor of Public Health Weill Medical College of Cornell University Prepared for the International Conference on Nuclear Weapons Sponsored by the Royal Society of Medicine and IPPNW London -- October 3, 2007

Nation-States Possessing Nuclear Weapons in 2007

Nuclear Weapons -Declared States USA ,310 Russia ,200 France China Britain StrategicTacticalReserveTotal Nation-States With Declared Nuclear Weapons

Nation-States With De Facto States Israel – India – Pakistan – North Korea - ? Nation-States With De Facto Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Weapons Today 27,000 nuclear warheads with the equivalent explosive force of: –Over 200,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. –10 billion tons of TNT, 2 tons for every human on the planet. 2,000-3,000 on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on a few minutes notice.

Nuclear Posture Review  Bush Administration’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review asserts a permanent role for nuclear weapons into the future  Russia and China remain targets and 5 other countries are listed as potential targets of US nuclear weapons: Iran, Iraq,Libya, North Korea, Syria  Reshapes arsenal from one intended mainly for deterrence to one for nuclear war-fighting and distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear missions and weapons becomes blurred.

Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC) A model NWC – a convention to to ban the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, much like the conventions on biological and chemical weapons – was drafted in 1996 by an international consortium of lawyers, scientists, and disarmament experts and was submitted by Costa Rica to the United Nations. It became a formal UN document, available in the six official UN languages. In 1997, the United Nations General Assembly called for negotiations leading to the conclusion of a NWC.

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) ICAN was launched by IPPNW in 2007 to urge negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention. The campaign focuses on the nuclear-weapons states’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons, which risk their use by design, accident, or terrorism, and are a continued instigation for others to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. In order to reduce the probability of the use of nuclear weapons, ICAN also urges that existing weapons be taken off high alert and that nuclear-weapons states commit themselves to a “no first-use” policy.