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DESCRIPTION:Topics: Community\,Diversity\,Ethics\,Public Health\,Sustainabi
 lity\nEvent Types: Exhibition\,Lecture\nDepartment/Office: Francis A. Count
 way Library of Medicine\nLocation: Harvard Longwood Campus\nRSVP Required: 
 Yes\nLink: https://countway.info/prescriptions0128\n\nJoin us on Tuesday\, 
 January 28 from 1:00 to 2:00 for a talk on physician anti-nuclear activism.
 \n\nThis event is open to all. Registration is required.\n\nIn 1961\, a sma
 ll group of Boston-area doctors and medical students started meeting weekly
  at one faculty member’s home in Newton\, Massachusetts to discuss the heal
 th consequences of a nuclear explosion on civilian populations. Over the co
 urse of the next six months\, this group\, later called Physicians for Soci
 al Responsibility (PSR)\, realized there was hardly any literature\, and in
 sufficient data\, on the medical effects of long-term radiation exposure. T
 hese conversations resulted in a series of articles published in the New En
 gland Journal of Medicine\, which synthesized information from military str
 ategists and scientists to extrapolate the medical consequences of a hypoth
 etical nuclear attack on the United States and project this evidence onto t
 he Boston area. By 1963\, PSR had roughly 1\,000 physician members with fiv
 e chapters in major U.S. cities. After successfully lobbying for the passag
 e of the Limited Test Ban Treaty to prohibit atmospheric nuclear testing\, 
 the organization entered a period of dormancy until it emerged again in the
  1980s\, at the height of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.
 R.\, as International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)\
 , which eventually grew to a global network of over 100\,000 physicians in 
 over 40 countries. IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for effo
 rts to urge President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev to consider th
 e medical consequences of nuclear war.\n\nThis talk will present a brief hi
 story of PSR and IPPNW\, following the creation of a medical model for anti
 -nuclear activism in the 1960s to the internationalization of that model in
  the 1980s.  It will examine how physicians advanced a powerful political a
 genda by medicalizing and humanizing the nuclear threat during periods of g
 eopolitical crisis.\n\nKatie Blanton\, MSc\, is a graduating student at Har
 vard Medical School who recently completed a master’s degree in public heal
 th at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her undergraduate t
 hesis\, “The Doomsday Doctors: Medical Activism in the Nuclear Age\, 1960–2
 000\,” won Harvard’s Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarly r
 esearch and excellence in the art of teaching.\n\n \n\nThis event accompani
 es the launch of the Center for the History of Medicine's Prescriptions for
  Peace\, an exhibition on physician anti-nuclear activism\, 1961-1985\, on 
 view on floors L2\, L1\, and 1 of the Countway Library beginning January 21
 \, 2025.
DTEND:20250128T190000Z
DTSTAMP:20260508T151116Z
DTSTART:20250128T180000Z
LOCATION:Countway Library\, Room 102
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Prescriptions for Peace: Physician Activism in the Nuclear Age\, 19
 60-1985\, with Katie Blanton\, MSc
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_48619485970563
URL:https://calendar.college.harvard.edu/event/prescriptions-for-peace-phys
 ician-activism-in-the-nuclear-age-1960-1985-with-katie-blanton-msc
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