2023-08-03 08:45:36
“Nuclear-weapon states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us,” wrote the editors of eleven medical journals in an editorial.
A hundred medical journals around the world launched this Thursday a rare joint call to act urgently to eliminate nuclear weapons, judging the threat of a “significant and growing” nuclear disaster.
Call comes after thinly veiled threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin over possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukrainerepeated attempts to north korean missiles and the blocking of initiatives to non-proliferation.
“The danger is significant and growing,” the editors of 11 leading medical journals, including the BMJ, Lancet, JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in an editorial. “Nuclear-weapon states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us,” the editorial stresses.
“The fact that all of these leading journals have agreed to publish the same editorial highlights the extreme urgency of the current nuclear crisis,” said Chris Zielinski of the World Association of Medical Journal Editors.
“Even a ‘limited’ nuclear war involving just 250 of the world’s 13,000 nuclear weapons could kill 120 million people and cause global climate disruption leading to nuclear starvation and the endangerment of two billion people.”
Meeting in Vienna
This text is published the same week as a meeting, in Vienna, of the preparatory committee for a new review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of the United Nations, which entered into force in 1970.
Sunday will also mark the 68th anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons against civilianswhen the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city ofHiroshima, August 6, 1945.
Any use of nuclear weapons “would be catastrophic for humanity“Even a ‘limited’ nuclear war involving just 250 of the world’s 13,000 nuclear weapons could kill 120 million people and cause global climate disruption leading to nuclear starvation and the endangerment of two billion people,” according to its authors.
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