NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENTS
WARN OF NUCLEAR WAR DANGERS
Author: By Stephen H. Miller, Associated Press
Date: Thursday, December 12, 1985
Page: 62
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
Dr. Bernard Lown, the American cofounder of the antiwar organization that won
this year's Nobel Peace Prize, warned yesterday that military safeguards
against nuclear war are almost certain to fail.
"In no previous epoch were adversaries so continuously and totally
mobilized for instant war," Lown, a cardiologist from Newton, Mass., said in
the traditional peace prize lecture. "It is a statistical certainty that
hair-trigger readiness cannot endure as a permanent condition."
Lown spoke after Dr. Yevgeni Chazov of the Soviet Union used his lecture
to criticize the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative,
popularly called the "star wars" proposal, as "one more step toward nuclear
catastrophe."
The two doctors are cofounders of International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War, which claims more than 135,000 members in 41
countries.
They spoke in the same hall at Oslo University in which they accepted the
prize's gold medal on Tuesday. The lectures were the last major events in
Scandinavia's annual Nobel ceremonies.
"As no national interest would justify inflicting genocide on the victim
and suicide on the aggressor, a prevalent misconception is that nuclear war
will never be fought," said Lown. "But the realities of our age compel an
opposite assessment."
Lown said the medical profession, "which in past wars mitigated misery and
saved lives, has nothing to offer following nuclear war."
Nuclear war "could blanket the sky with smoke, dust and soot, creating a
pall of all-pervasive darkness and frigid cold," Lown said.
"But there is more," he said. "Since cities are enormous storehouses of
combustible materials, raging fire storms would release into the air a
Pandora's Box of deadly toxins.
"When dust, poisons and soot finally clear, another deadly plague would be
visited on the unfortunate survivors: high levels of ultraviolet light caused
by depletion of atmospheric ozone."
Chazov said a "space shield" would encourage a first strike by the nation
that felt it was protected. "Any defense will inevitably lead to the creation
of the means to overcome it," he said.
He said that supporting SDI research because it is defensive in nature is
similar to justifying the creation of the atomic bomb in World War II because
of the threat that such a bomb might be produced by Germany.
During that time, he said, "the moral objections and conscience of
scientists and many others involved were lulled by assurances that everything
would be over after production of a few bombs."
Lown and Chazov yesterday collected the check for $235,000 that goes with
the prize. They said it would be used to improve the administration of their
organization and to send representatives on trips to promote its views.
In Sweden, checks for the same amount were distributed to the five
Americans, a West German and a Frenchman who received the Nobel Prizes in
chemistry, medicine, physics, economics and literature.
Among the Americans was Franco Modigliani, 67, a professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Modigliani won the economics prize for
his analyses of savings and financial markets.
Nobel Prizes are always awarded on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death
in 1896 of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who established most of the
prizes in his will. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was
established in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden.
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