MOVEMENT WORLD DOCTORS FOR THE PREVENTION OF THE NUCLEAR WAR

 

History of medicine

FORMATION OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN THE FIELD OF HEALTH CARE

MOVEMENT "WORLD DOCTORS FOR THE PREVENTION OF THE NUCLEAR WAR"

 

Of the 5 thousand years of the written history of mankind, only 292 years have passed on the earth without wars; the remaining 47 centuries preserved the memory of 15,513 large and small wars, which claimed more than 4 billion lives. Of these, at least 50 million lives ended in the margins of the Second World War (1939-1945).

 

For the Soviet Union, it was the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Protecting their land from the fascist invaders, the Soviet people, according to incomplete calculations, lost more than 26 million lives on the battlefields of military operations. Millions of people were disabled. But among those who returned home with a victory, there were many millions of soldiers and officers returned to life, thanks to the dedicated work of military and civilian physicians.

 

From the first days of the war, the medical service experienced serious difficulties, there was a sharp shortage of power and resources, and there was a shortage of personnel. In this regard, the early graduation courses of the last two courses of the military medical academies and medical faculties were conducted, and the accelerated training of paramedics and junior military paramedics was organized. As a result, by the second year of the war, the army was staffed with doctors by 91%, medical assistants by 97.9%, medical instructors by 91.8%, and pharmacists by 89.5%.

 

The well-structured system of anti-epidemic measures in the Soviet army led to an unprecedented result in the history of wars: during the Great Patriotic War, there were no epidemics in the Soviet troops.

 

Doctors have made an invaluable contribution to the victory. At the front and in the rear, day and night, in the extremely difficult conditions of the war years, they saved the lives of millions of warriors (Fig. 159). As a result, 72.3% of the wounded and 90.6% of the patients returned to service. “Armies and separate formations,” Marshal K. K. Rokossovsky later wrote, “were replenished mainly with soldiers and officers who returned from hospital, army hospitals, and medical battalions after treatment. Truly, our physicians were hero-workers.

 

They did everything to quickly put the wounded to their feet, to give them the opportunity to return to the ranks again. ” For heroic work and exploits in the years of the Great Patriotic War, more than 116 thousand medical workers were awarded orders and medals of the Soviet Union, 47 military doctors were awarded the highest degree of distinction - the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and Academician N. N. Burdenko (President of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Chief surgeon of the Red Army), Yu. Yu. Dzhanelidze (chief surgeon of the Navy) and L. A. Orbeli (vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, head of the Military Medical Academy) were awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor.

 

Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko (1876–1946) was the first president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences). Established in 1944, it united the leading medical scientists of our country (Fig. 160).

 

The wounds inflicted by the Second World War are still very painful; the loss of war is irreplaceable, and its horrors and privations are alive in memory. That is why the protection of peace and the prevention of a new war became a paramount task for the Soviet people in the postwar years. In the context of the Cold War and the growing arms race, the Soviet Union took an active part in the peace movement. Approving humanistic and peacemaking traditions, the USSR fruitfully participated in the activities of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Red Cross and other international organizations.

 

Already in 1946, the Soviet Union submitted to the UN a draft international convention on the prohibition of the use, production, storage and destruction of all stockpiles of atomic weapons within three months. Soviet initiatives aimed at limiting the arms race and eliminating weapons of mass destruction are known to all mankind. However, in the world there is still an underestimation of the danger of the occurrence and scale of the consequences of a nuclear war.

 

According to UN experts, about 15 thousand megatons of nuclear explosives have been accumulated on the globe today, which equals one million bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. This corresponds to about six thousand "second world wars" in explosive ordnance power. According to doctors, the victims of nuclear war, if it breaks out, will be at least two billion people (half of humanity); survivors will experience the hardest long-term effects of air pollution, including the so-called "nuclear winter". A nuclear war is doomed to become the “last epidemic” on Earth - and then the Earth, continuing its existence as a celestial body, will rotate in its orbit around the Sun for billions of years without an oxygen atmosphere, without vegetation, without a human ...

 

The first to understand it were those who stood at the origins of the study of atomic energy. Already in the 20s of our century, an outstanding Soviet scientist, Academician V.I. Vernadsky warned: “The time is not far off when a person will get atomic energy into his own hands — a source of strength that will enable him to build his life as he wants ... Will a person be able to use this force, direct it for good, and not for self-destruction? ”A year before the atomic bomb was invented, Niels Bohr, one of the founders of nuclear physics, the Nobel Prize winner, raised this question.

 

More than 30 years ago, A. .. Einstein, B. Russell, F. Joliot-Curie and other scientists organized the Pugwash movement of scientists (mainly physicists) in order to draw the attention of all mankind to the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction. However, only doctors, by virtue of their professionalism, were able to fully appreciate the full depth of the medical and biological consequences of a nuclear catastrophe and see the threat of omnicide, the universal self- and mutual destruction of humanity.

 

In the fall of 1979, prominent American cardiologist, Professor Bernard Laun (Laun, Bernard) wrote to his colleagues at the Cardiology Center in Moscow:

Over the past few years, I am increasingly worried about the growing nuclear arms race. 1978 was in this sense a sad record of mankind, to which very few people paid attention. For the first time, the total amount of military spending of all countries of the world exceeded one billion dollars a day. These costs are a challenge to elementary logic, common sense, and the basics of morality. There is a genuine possibility that nuclear weapons will be used before the end of this century. Neither yours nor our society will emerge alive from such a thermonuclear catastrophe.

Medical circles, unfortunately, still remain silent. But does the people of our profession social responsibility arises only when the number of victims begins to grow? I believe that doctors have an exceptional ability to influence society ...

 

I believe that the conference of Soviet, Japanese and American doctors to discuss the implications of a nuclear arms race for medicine will contribute to raising global public opinion.

 

In the spring of 1980, a large conference of American medical scientists and doctors was held in the United States to consider the possible consequences of a nuclear war. The conference participants addressed the US and USSR governments with an open statement: “Danger: nuclear war”, in which, based on scientific analysis, the governments were warned that as a result of a nuclear war, even if “limited”, an unprecedented number of people in the history of mankind would die and called physicians around the world join forces in the fight against nuclear threats. Soviet doctors supported the call of their American colleagues, and at the end of 1980, a meeting of six Soviet and American medical scientists was held in Geneva: professors L. A. Il'in, M. I. Kuzin, E. I. Chazov (USSR), professor B. Launa and Dr. D. Muller and E. Chevian (USA), who initiated the international movement Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War.

 

The first international congress of the Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War movement took place in March 1981 in the small town of Arly (USA). Congress participants from 11 countries of the world for the first time presented a summary of the medical consequences of nuclear war and adopted documents that were later used by the world community, unofficial and official international organizations (UN, WHO). For the first time, the memorandum of the Congress provided specific data on the consequences of the explosion of a 1 megaton atomic bomb over a city with a population of 1 million people: 300 thousand people who died instantly; 400 thousand affected; the inability to provide effective assistance to millions of wounded, burned, patients with radiation sickness; the defeat of the biosphere - the living will envy the dead - this conclusion of the Congress impressed the general public.

In a short time, the movement to prevent nuclear war attracted hundreds of thousands of doctors from around the world. They conduct research; explain to their patients, the public and governments what threat to life and health poses a nuclear weapon; create training programs for students.

 

In July 1981, the Soviet Committee "Doctors for the Prevention of Nuclear War" was organized under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. He focused his work on two areas: the scientific development of assessments of possible medical consequences of a nuclear war, and information from the domestic and international public, governments and international organizations on the possible consequences of nuclear war. Many institutions and organizations of our country are collective members of this international movement, among them is the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, where students from more than 100 countries of Asia, Africa, America, Europe and our country are studying.

 

By the end of 1981, the movement of doctors advocating the prevention of nuclear war had already formed in 31 countries of the world.

The congresses of the movement began to be held annually in various states, attracting the attention of their peoples and governments to the fight against nuclear catastrophe.

 

Speaking against nuclear war, doctors see in it not only the probability of the instantaneous death of mankind. The presence of nuclear weapons on Earth today and the preparation for war are already causing damage to the life and health of the world's population - “they are being killed before detonation occurs”. The destruction of the environment, major industrial accidents, natural disasters and even terrorist attacks and other local disasters can greatly accelerate the environmental degradation of the environment, bring it to the verge of a real disaster.

 

Among the factors that threaten the survival of mankind, doctors see the very behavior of man. Interracial and interethnic hostility, conflicts and clashes on religious and ideological grounds, hindering the creation of a non-violent nuclear-free world, can become the trigger of major wars. Ordinary wars, or as they are often called “local armed conflicts,” also threaten the survival of humanity — after the Second World War, more than 30 million people died in them. Doctors see another side of the problem of nuclear weapons: they divert huge amounts of money that could be used to solve the social problems of mankind.

 

The 5th Congress of the Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War movement, held in Budapest in the summer of 1985, cited figures that left no one indifferent: the daily expenditure on armaments reached $ 2.2 billion, while the WHO’s budget for fighting malaria 1984-1985 amounted to only 29 million dollars (!). According to WHO estimates, the total elimination of malaria throughout the world requires $ 450 million, i.e. only one-fifth (!) Of what is spent on weapons in the world every day. Other figures are also striking: the number of soldiers on Earth is ten times the army of doctors. (there are a little more than 3 million).

 

Today, when top-level negotiations between the leaders of our country and the United States are started and successfully held, the doctors of the world, fighting to prevent nuclear war, are in favor of a complete ban on nuclear weapons, freezing nuclear weapons and their subsequent reduction and elimination; for the non-proliferation of an arms race to space; for refusing military methods of resolving interstate contradictions; for the improvement of the human environment and in the protection of nature; for switching funds from the arms race to peaceful purposes; for the comprehensive and harmonious development of the human personality - that is, for a rational solution of the problems facing humanity at all levels from the individual to the global.

Based on this, the Third Congress of the Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War movement, which was held in Amsterdam in 1983, appealed to governments of all countries of the world to add words to the Doctor’s Oath to the doctors of the 20th century. about preserving the health and lives of patients living under the threat of nuclear war.

On November 15, 1983, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, on the basis of the principles of the struggle for peace and for the prevention of nuclear war pursued by our state, approved the addendum to the official text of the Doctor's Oath:

Aware of the danger posed by nuclear weapons, to tirelessly fight for peace, to prevent nuclear war.

 

In 1985, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Doctors of the World for the Prevention of Nuclear War movement the Nobel Peace Prize - “for merits to mankind in spreading reliable information about the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war and bringing it to people’s consciousness”. The prize was presented to the co-chairmen of the movement, Professor Harvard University Bernard Laun and Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (now RAMS) EI Chazov.

 

The struggle for peace, against the threat of nuclear war and impending environmental catastrophe united mankind. The peoples of the Earth, more than ever, began to realize the need for unity. The priority of universal values ​​began to come to the fore. Together with him comes an understanding of the value of human life, the physical and moral health of society, its spiritual wealth. But from awareness to realization, the distance is huge. The time will come when humanity will overcome it and, looking back, will see and gratefully appreciate the contribution made on this long and difficult path by the History of doctors, medical scientists, sisters of mercy - figures of Medicine of all times and peoples.

Students studying the history of medicine are just starting their journey in science. All life and all things ahead.

 

The history of medicine