Category: Press Releases

As the nation appears to be on the brink of nuclear war, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) is reprinting its 50-year-old message in the New England Journal of Medicine. It claims that the existence of nuclear weapons is an “existential threat to humanity,” and that there is an urgent need to abolish them.

It is of course true that nuclear weapons effects are devastating. However, the “nuclear winter” theory that Physicians for Social Responsibility still cites was debunked and discredited long ago, as explained by Michael Crichton in a 2003 lecture at Caltech. Continue reading “Activist Doctors Still Disseminating Flawed, Dangerous Advice on Nuclear Weapons, Says PCD”

U.S. and Russian aircraft could literally be on a collision course in Syria, as the two countries have not agreed on flight safety rules in Syrian airspace. U.S. pilots are under orders to change their flight path if a Russian plane is within 20 nautical miles, according to a CNN report.

Americans who lived through the Cold War may recall the novel Alas, Babylon, in which a worldwide nuclear conflagration resulted from an accident caused by a low-level military officer. At that time, people were knowledgeable about nuclear weapons effects, and the U.S. had a civil defense program, notes Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D. Today, there would be millions of avoidable casualties. Continue reading “Could Americans Face Nuclear Attack Because of Syria, Asks PCD”

While the press is preoccupied with the Iran deal, nuclear threats from other sources also build. A German reporter embedded with the Islamic State (ISIS) revealed that the jihadist terror group plans to bring nuclear annihilation across the globe, according to a report in Israel National News.

ISIS intends to get its hands on nuclear weapons, says Jurgen Todenhofer, calling the group a “nuclear tsunami preparing the largest religious cleansing in history.” He writes that “the terrorists plan on killing several hundred million people. The west is drastically underestimating the power of ISIS.”

A nuclear arms race in the Middle East, involving Iran and rival states such as Saudi Arabia, could lead to nuclear proliferation that increases the chance of weapons falling into the hands of ISIS. Continue reading “Nuclear Threat May Be Imminent; U.S. Unprepared, States Physicians for Civil Defense”

In the run-up to international climate change talks in Paris, and with pressure from the Pope to help “smoke out” Congress on “climate change denial,” the press celebrates a study purporting to show 3 million premature deaths per year globally from air pollution.

The most important component of pollution is said to be small particulates—smoke and dust, along with ozone. Cutting CO₂ emissions would incidentally cut down on these particulates (PM2.5s) and allegedly postpone 3 million deaths from stroke, heart attack, chronic obstructive lung disease, acute lower respiratory infection, and lung cancer. The study was published in the Sep 17 issue of the prestigious British journal Nature.

Complicated mathematical models are used to extrapolate conclusions from small epidemiologic studies to the entire globe, notes Physicians for Civil Defense. They assume that all particles are equally deadly, no matter their composition, and that tiny exposures over time can be as bad as or worse than a big exposure all at once. They ignore other possible explanations for different rates of diseases in different locations. Continue reading “Dust Does Not Cause 3 Million Strokes, Heart Attacks, or Other Deaths a Year, States PCD”

The “Bomb Boat” is ferry workers’ nickname for the MV Sankaty, which carries fuel tanker trucks. It docks next to the passenger ferry Island Home, which can carry up to 1,000 passengers, according to Stephen Jones, Special Projects Director of Physicians for Civil Defense.

Jones has investigated what he considers unsafe conditions on the Martha’s Vineyard Steamship Authority ferries. His sources are senior ferry workers and personal observation. He has also met with eight members of the Steamship Authority and with county emergency manager Chuck Conior. Continue reading “The “Bomb Boat” of Martha’s Vineyard: Travelers’ Warning from Physicians for Civil Defense”

TUCSON, Ariz. The state of the Climate 2014 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Meteorological Society “delves into the details of already reported record-smashing warmth globally  in 2014,” according to the Associated Press.

The report actually states that there is an estimated 48% probability that 2014 is the warmest over the 1880 – 2014 period in the NOAA record. (NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt said the probability was 38%.) Continue reading “2014: Year of Hottest Rhetoric, Not of Hottest Climate”

 

Pope Francis, President Obama, medical organizations, and the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet are all demanding “action” to prevent disastrous public health effects from “climate change.”

The most important action is the Obama Administration’s war on coal, the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions, and the fuel for some 40 percent of the nation’s electricity generation. Since the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions could have, at most, a negligible effect on global temperature, according to current computer models, that is not a factor in the hypothetical number of “lives saved.”

The public health rationale for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) draconian “mercury rule” is the predicted decrease in deaths from respiratory ailments. The actual suspect for asthma deaths is not the mercury but the small (ultrafine) particulates (dust) also present in the emissions. These are called PM2.5s because they are less than 2.5 microns (0.0025 millimeters) in diameter.

Based on highly speculative calculations, and common statistical fallacies, the EPA has testified in Congress that PM2.5s can kill instantly in any dose.

If this is true, there is serious danger from fireworks. Air quality after the Fourth of July displays is about 40 percent worse than on normal days, and particulates can be 400 percent higher in Washington, D.C., between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on July 4. The study that measured the PM2.5s did not look for public health effects. EPA spokesmen commented that they wanted everyone to enjoy the fireworks, although they recommended that sensitive persons should watch from upwind.

“We do not expect a surge in emergency room visits by people wheezing because of fireworks,” stated Jane Orient. M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense. “And we want them to continue to enjoy the benefits of reliable, affordable electricity, including air conditioning.”

“The public health effects from job loss, power blackouts, and the economy-wide price increases from increased electricity prices would be immediate, severe, and real,” she said, “in contrast to the remote, tiny, and fanciful benefits of EPA coal rules.”

“If the EPA believed its own pronouncements, it would immediately ban fireworks.”

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

In a resolution passed today in the U.S. House of Representatives, by a vote of 411 to 10, the U.S. effectively “declared Cold War on Russia,” according to a statement by Daniel McAdams, executive director at the Ron Paul Institute, to RT [Russia Today].

McAdams said it was also a declaration of war for Kiev against Donetsk and Lugansk, two new self-proclaimed states in eastern Ukraine. “This is a green light for the [NATO-backed] Poroshenko government to resume military actions against the “separatists” in Eastern Ukraine.”  Continue reading “U.S. House Vote Could Lead to War with Russia”

Tucson, Ariz. In Oct 16 hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, no one asked why the deadly Ebola virus is no longer being treated as a “level 4” threat.

Scientists who work with Ebola do it only in BSL-4 (biosafety level-4) laboratories, in which they are protected against breathing potentially contaminated air and have complete skin surface protection by means of an encapsulating “space suit.” Entry into a BSL-4 facility is only through an air lock. Before leaving a BSL-4 facility, the outside of the “space suit” is sprayed with a mist of decontamination solution for several minutes. All equipment that enters the BSL-4 area is sterilized with paraformaldehyde gas before it is removed. All other materials are bagged and immediately incinerated on site.

One researcher who had an accidental needlestick was immediately isolated in a BSL-4 medical facility called “the Slammer,” suitable for intensive care by practiced physicians and nurses from Walter Reed, wearing encapsulating suits. BSL-4 isolation is for 21 days as described by David Quammen in his book Spillover.

Hundreds of workers in Africa, and now two in the U.S., have caught the disease when using lower levels of protection. Yet the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) asserts that every hospital in the U.S. can be adequately prepared, and told a nurse who had been exposed that it was fine to take a commercial flight.

Some congressmen complained that the CDC did not have enough money. But none mentioned that the special military unit for transporting patients under BSL-4 level conditions, the Aeromedical Isolation and Special Medical Augmentation Response Team (AIT-SMART), which was created in 1978, was dismantled in 2010.

“Having seriously downgraded our response capability, U.S. government agencies are now pretending that the actual threat level is less,” stated Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane Orient, M.D. “Both our military and civilian population are at grave risk.”

Sending in a rapid response team from Atlanta is not a substitute for respirators, negative-pressure isolation rooms, and proper decontamination procedures, she noted. Neither are “tear sheets” instructing air travelers from epidemic areas to check their temperature.

“Official denial of the seriousness of the threat is reckless and irresponsible,” she stated. The disease is now killing 70 percent of its victims in Africa.

Physicians for Civil Defense has long advocated better preparedness for disasters, including natural epidemics and biological warfare.

Tucson, Ariz. At the time of the Utal Emergency Management Association (UEMA) conference on Jan 9, 2014, Physicians for Civil Defense issued the following statement:

All Americans, starting with first responders and emergency managers, need to know this basic life-saving principle: “Drop and cover if you see a sudden very bright light.”

Such a light will be followed by a deadly shock wave within seconds. Those who drop and cover will probably survive. Those who do not are likely to be killed or suffer severe injury.

During the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor explosion, a fourth-grade teacher in Chelyabinsk, Yulia Karbysheva, saved 44 children from potentially life-threatening window glass cuts by ordering them to hide under their desks when she saw the flash. Ms. Karbysheva, who remained standing, was seriously lacerated when the explosion’s blast wave arrived and windows shattered. A tendon in her arm was severed, but not one of her students suffered a cut.

“Large meteor strikes are sufficiently probable that both the U.S. and Russia are working on ways to divert them. In 1908 a meteor strike flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest,” stated president Jane M. Orient, M.D.

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