On Tuesday evening, I had the opportunity to join a distinguished group of current and former administration officials, members of Congress, senior reporters and colleagues from throughout the arms control community, in a private showing of Nuclear Tipping Point. Read more »
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Two issues with special relevance to PSR are emerging here at the NPT review in New York: Austria, Switzerland, China and the 80 odd nations of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) have explicitly endorsed a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC), and recommended that a call to initiate negotiations for a NWC be included in the final document of the Review Conference. The call reflects a widely held view among participants that nuclear disarmament is as important as non proliferation and can not be put off indefinitely as it has in the past. Read more »
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For those students who have never attended the NPT review conference, I would like to first give a snapshot of what the experience–or at least the first couple of days–is like. First, you queue…for hours. We waited outside in a line with visitors and other NGO representatives. Unfortunately there were only two people working at the registration on day 1, and this inside line inside was even worse – perhaps spending five minutes on each person, and well, with, say, 75 people in front of you…and you can do the math. Read more »

The Non Proliferation Treaty review conference begins this week in New York against the back drop of one of the worst environmental disasters in decades, and the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf should give the nuclear negotiators at the UN much to think about. Read more »
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For those students who have never attended the NPT review conference, I would like to first give a snapshot of what the experience–or at least the first couple of days–is like. First, you queue…for hours. We waited outside in a line with visitors and other NGO representatives. Unfortunately there were only two people working at the registration on day 1, and this inside line inside was even worse – perhaps spending five minutes on each person, and well, with, say, 75 people in front of you…and you can do the math. Read more »

I write this in the midst of what some are calling our Nuclear Spring – our imperfect moment of opportunity. After years of little progress on moving the world toward a future free from the horrors of nuclear weapons, we now see a potential thaw. Read more »

Despite much criticism, the new START treaty represents an important achievement in arms control, because it restores verifiable and enforced nuclear arms reductions between the United States and Russia. It replaces the meaningless Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) negotiated by the Bush administration, which was jokingly described as "SORT of a nuclear arms control treaty", because it contained no verification measures and only came into force the day it expired. Read more »
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As the Senate considers the CTBT and the new START treaties this year, it is important to realize the powerful role that PSR and health professionals can play in moving the public to support steps to reduce the nuclear danger. Read more »

Although the ongoing Nuclear Posture Review is supposed to include all aspects of the strategy and doctrine that govern the use of U.S. nuclear weapons, it once again will not consider one crucial question: What would be the long-term consequences to Earth's environment if the U.S. nuclear arsenal were detonated during a conflict? Read more »

Having had the opportunity today to join the audience hearing Vice President Joe Biden’s speech outlining the Administration’s approach to managing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, strengthening nonproliferation and reducing nuclear risks, I am struck again by their strong rhetorical commitment to “take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons”. Read more »
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In his first State of the Union address, President Barack Obama eloquently described the threat of nuclear weapons as the “greatest danger to the American people.” Invoking the arms control legacy of President John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, the President also repeated his earlier promise to pursue a strategy that reverses the spread of nuclear weapons and seeks a world without them. Read more »

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Clock back 1 minute signaling an increased environment of international cooperation on nuclear disarmament but with considerable hurdles left before real action is taken. Read more »

President Obama's Nobel address was not the speech that many of us had hoped for. He did state again his commitment to nuclear disarmament but he certainly did not use the address to build the case for eliminating nuclear weapons nor to lay out a plan for achieving this aim. Read more »
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I, like many people, spent the early part of this morning in bed watching President Obama receive the Nobel Peace Prize. I was struck by the contrasts and conflicting aspects of his speech. I was only a medical student working for IPPNW when I attended the Nobel ceremonies in 1985. Read more »
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At tonight's Nobel Dinner the vice chair of the Nobel Committee delivered a great speech in which she stressed the theme of this year's Nobel Prize as a "Call to Action". She cited a passage in Obama's first book where he describes a bus ride during an early community organizing effort and the ongoing impact it had sustaining his commitment to the work he was doing in Chicago. She expressed the wish that the ride to Oslo would have the same effect on him now, and spoke plainly of the enormous hopes the world invests in him and of the "audacity" of the Nobel Committee in challenging him further to meet those hopes. Read more »
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CNN has published a piece I wrote urging President Obama to use the Nobel Address to reaffirm his commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spell out why it is in America's national security interest to secure a nuclear weapons convention. Read more »

This evening a number of organizations sponsored a forum "How to Build Momentum towards a Nuclear Weapons Free World" . Alyn Ware, the coordinator of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, and I were the speakers. Read more »

The Nobel Committee has invited me to attend the award ceremony and dinner in Oslo this week to represent the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and our US affiliate Physicians for Social Responsibility. This year marks the 24th anniversary of our receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for the work we did alerting the world to the medical consequences of nuclear war. Read more »

Tova's speech from the International Youth Dialogue for Nuclear Disarmament Read more »

A review of day 1 of PNA's (Project for Nuclear Awareness) International Youth Dialogue for Nuclear Disarmament. Read more »