Ending Nuclear Weapons, Before They End Us

This May, the World Health Assembly (WHA) will vote on re-establishing a mandate for the World Health Organization (WHO) to address the health consequences of nuclear weapons and war.1 Health professionals and their associations should urge their governments to support such a mandate and support the new UN comprehensive study on the effects of nuclear war. The first atomic bomb exploded in the New Mexico desert 80 years ago, in July 1945. Three weeks later, two relatively small (by today’s standards), tactical-size nuclear weapons unleashed a cataclysm of radioactive incineration on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of 1945, about 213,000 people were dead.2 Tens of thousands more have died from late effects of the bombings. Last December, Nihon Hidankyo, a movement that brings together atomic bomb survivors, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”3 For the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the award validated the most fundamental human right: the right to live. The Committee warned that the menace of nuclear weapons is now more urgent than ever before. In the words of Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes, “it is naive to believe our civilisation can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons. The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation.”4 He noted that our survival depended on keeping intact the “nuclear taboo” (which stigmatises the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable).5 The nuclear taboo gains strength from recognition of compelling evidence of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, its severe global climatic and famine consequences, and the impossibility of any effective humanitarian response. This evidence contributed significantly to ending the Cold War nuclear arms race.6,7 While the numbers of nuclear weapons are down to 12,331 now, from their 1986 peak of 70,300,8 this is still equivalent to 146,605 Hiroshima bombs,9 and does not mean humanity is any safer.10 Even a fraction of the current arsenal could decimate the biosphere in a severe mass extinction event. The global climate disruption caused by the smoke pouring from cities ignited by just 2% of the current arsenal could result in over two billion people starving.11