Resistance to nuclear weapons has not only come from
peaceniks but from the medical profession.
In 1980, medical doctors from the two Cold War nations (Drs. Bernard Lown, James Muller,
Eric Chivian and Herb Abrams, US and Drs. Eugueni Chazov, Leonid Ilyin and
Mikhail Kuzin, USSR) met and agreed to
organize a physicians movement againsat the nuclear threat.
As physicians, they believed that they had an obligation to
prevent what they could treat.
IPPNW developed a number of important research studies
about the effects of atomic bombs by looking at data collected by Japanese doctors who studied effects of the bombs
dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. IPPNW also documented the heath and environmental effects of the production, testing and
use of nuclear weapons from the 1980s through the 1990s.
In 1985, the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
