Anti-Nuclear Work

Physicians for Social Responsibility was founded in 1961 to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. In an era when schoolchildren were still trained to "survive" a nuclear attack in Duck and Cover exercises, the need for PSR was clear.

In a series of groundbreaking articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, PSR physicians detailed the threat to America, and to the entire world, from a nuclear war. PSR physicians documented the presence of strontium 90 — a radioactive by-product of nuclear tests — in children's teeth, demonstrating that nuclear testing has serious public health implications. This work contributed much to the agreement of the Partial Test Ban in 1963, that ended above ground nuclear testing.

In the following decades, our efforts to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear war grew into an international movement, with the founding of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). PSR shared in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to IPPNW in 1985.

In the late 1980s, PSR's work on the health consequences of the development, testing and production of nuclear weapons were brought together in the publication Dead Reckoning. A decade of work succeeded in creating a compensation program for workers made sick during the course of their work in the nuclear weapons complex.

In the 1990s, PSR worked to end nuclear testing altogether succeeded in bringing about first the US nuclear test moratorium, and then the negotiation and signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to ratify this Treaty.

Today, the PSR Security Program works to prevent nuclear war, and to prevent the rollback of decades of progress by those in the United States who wish to develop new, usable nuclear weapons; resume nuclear testing and even use these terrible devices on the battlefields of the world. As the US now spends more money on nuclear weapons each year than even during the Cold War, PSR's work to prevent a nuclear holocaust is more vital than ever.

PSR/Chicago plays an important role in disseminating the Security programs of the National PSR office. In addition, PSR/Chicago has been active on issues of nuclear terrorism, the consequences of an attack against a nuclear power plant near Chicago, the Iraq War and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.