Category: Press Releases

While public health officials are preoccupied with measles, hundreds of people are coming through our border from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where thousands have Ebola, notes Physicians for Civil Defense.

In the entire U.S., there are about half a dozen hospital beds equipped for safe treatment of Ebola victims. We were very fortunate to escape a disastrous outbreak here during the epidemic in West Africa. There are two new vaccines that generate antibodies, but we don’t know how protective they would be—if you are one of the few who could get a dose.

Continue reading “Urgent Questions on Ebola Need Immediate Answers”

At first glance it may appear that the United States holds the upper hand at the Trump-Kim Jong Un summit: a huge nuclear arsenal versus a few bombs and limited delivery capacity. However, if the U.S. aims to completely denuclearize and defang North Korea it faces a tremendous problem of scale, states Jane M. Orient, M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense.

“The amount of fissile material needed for a bomb can be concealed in something the size of a baseball, and a number of baseballs could be hidden in North Korea. But it is impossible to hide New York City or Washington, D.C.”

People in Guam, Hawaii, and Japan might sleep better if North Korea stops launching ballistic missiles in their direction, she added. “But you don’t need a missile to deliver a bomb. A suitcase might work.”

“It would be great to end the Korean War. But the best possible outcome of the summit won’t change the fact that Americans are completely unprepared for a nuclear attack by any of the nuclear-armed forces in the world.”

We have only a minimal shield against incoming missiles; no robust nationwide radiation monitoring network; shelters only for key government officials, billionaires, and  a few self-reliant citizens; no protection for the electric grid; and appalling ignorance of measures that could save millions of lives, Dr. Orient noted.

“Impoverished, oppressed North Koreans may be better prepared than Americans from a civil defense standpoint.”

For about $200,000, she estimates would be possible to create an expedient network that might save an estimated 30 million lives. “We have launched the PCD Radiologic Defense Project.” She also recommends  attending the 36^th annual meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Las Vegas, August 24-27. Featured speakers include Hiroshima survivor Toshiharu Kano, author of Passport to Hiroshima, who will provide a free expedient radiation monitor.

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

An article in the Mar 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine asks “Are We Prepared for Nuclear Terrorism?” The answer is obviously “no,” states Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D. “But the article will only make the perilous situation worse.”

“For decades, NEJM has been opposing life-saving preparedness for a nuclear attack, coupled with opposition to American weapons systems,” Dr. Orient recalls. “This article appears to be inspired by the Trump Administration’s plans to upgrade the U.S. arsenal. The sentence ‘Russia is taking parallel steps to increase its nuclear attack capabilities’ obscures the reality that those steps are evidently in the deployment, not the planning phase.”

“The U.S. has, in a sense, already succumbed to nuclear terrorism,” she states. “Irrational fears of insignificant doses of radiation have crippled our nuclear industry and will contribute to panic following any radiation release. The NEJM authors fan these fears by lengthy discussion of potential attacks on nuclear power plants. Yet the very worst incidents at nuclear facilities killed very few people.”

In contrast, the use of nuclear weapons could cause many thousands or millions of direct casualties. “Planning a medical response to an attack with weapons like these is futile,” the authors write. Such an attack is “not properly defined as terrorism,” they state, and is thus beyond the scope of preparedness. While advocating “prevention,” they neglect any mention of measures that could prevent millions of casualties in a nuclear explosion, Dr. Orient observes, the most important being, “If you see a bright flash, drop and cover.”

 

The NEJM authors mention that in the event of an incident, “exposed persons will almost certainly not have monitoring devices.” The medical community needs to ask why that is, Dr. Orient states.

“In the 1990s, the federal government discarded millions of dollars’ worth of instruments that state emergency managers maintained during the Cold War, and did not replace them,” she notes. “Much better technology exists, available from private sources, but is not widely deployed because of government and public apathy.”

“Preparedness for nuclear terrorism or war is a self-help endeavor in the U.S.,” Dr. Orient warns. “And the most prestigious mouthpieces of the medical profession are partly responsible for this appalling lack of concern for American lives.”

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

More than 300 scientists have sent a letter and background information to the president of the American Museum of Natural History in response to demands to remove Rebekah Mercer, a generous donor, from the Board of Trustees, reports Physicians for Civil Defense.

These demands come from agitators waving signs in front of the museum and an open letter circulating on the internet that amassed signatures from self-styled scientists. These include well-known proponents of the catastrophic, human-caused global warming (now climate change) hypothesis, along with many with no apparent scientific credentials, observes Physicians for Civil Defense president, Jane M. Orient, M.D.

The protestors complain that the Mercer Family Foundation has donated to politicians they don’t like and to supporters of scientists who dissent from the climate-change narrative, defaming them as “ringleaders of climate denial.” In fact, dissent is essential to science, and those who attempt to silence it are truly anti-science, Dr. Orient stated.

The letter to AMNH reads: “The case for harm from catastrophic global warming is growing weaker as more is learned about the Earth’s climate system, and about the poor predictive power of computer climate models. The Earth has supported abundant life many times in the geological past when there were much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is quite likely that future generations will benefit from the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with more carbon dioxide. And there is no doubt that policies advocated by many of the protestors will cause economic harm across the world, especially to those hoping to climb out of poverty.”

Signers of the letter include two Nobel laureates, Ivar Giaever (physics, 1973) and Kary Mullis (chemistry, 1993), and many other esteemed, highly accomplished scientists, notes Dr. Orient. “The American Museum of Natural History should not tarnish its long and honorable tradition by allowing political pressure and street theater to dictate its policy,”

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

 

At 8:07 a.m. on Saturday, Jan 13, citizens in Hawaii received a mobile alert: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii, seek immediate shelter.

This is not a drill,” according to The Hill. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (EMA) sent out another message 38 minutes later calling the initial alert a false alarm.

That interval was more than enough time for a missile from North Korea to reach its target.

Some citizens scurried to take shelter as in an underground parking garage, or even a storm drain, as pictured on RT.com. Some sped to try to reach home in their car. Some jammed phone lines to say good-by to family.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters referred to the missile alert as a “state exercise.” At change of shift, somebody apparently “pushed the wrong button.”

“What this exercise shows is the disarray in the EMA and the appalling unpreparedness of the U.S. in these days of nuclear proliferation,” stated Jane M. Orient, M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense. “Outside the zone of maximum destruction, most people could survive if they knew what to do. But most lack the basic information drilled into schoolchildren in the 1950s.”

“The knowledge that would save more lives than anything else is to drop and cover if you see a bright flash,” she said. “If you have warning, take the best available shelter, underground if possible, or in the interior of a building. Dirt, concrete, or mass of any type is a radiation shield.”

“A storm drain or parking garage could save your life. Driving around in a car is one of the worst things to do.”

Some nations, such as Russia and Switzerland, have an extensive shelter system. “But the U.S. abandoned its shelter survey decades ago,” Dr. Orient said.

After the initial detonation, there might be fallout danger. Physicians for Civil Defense has equipped many first responders with expedient “dot monitors” to detect dangerous levels of radiation. The U.S. has no robust national fallout monitoring net, and the Cold War radiation monitoring instruments maintained by states were retired decades ago and not replaced.

“The current Hazmat instruments are for interdiction. They would be offscale and worse than useless in a post-attack environment,” Dr. Orient stated.

“It is not safe to assume that rulers like Kim Jong-un will be deterred from using their nuclear arsenal by threat of retaliation,” Dr. Orient stated. “Americans need to consider what they will do if the mobile alert is for real. Even first responders told Stephen Jones on his coast-to-coast bike ride for civil defense that they had no training for this contingency.”

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com