On January 27, there was a resetting of the doomsday clock by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. We are currently at 85 seconds before midnight with the nuclear weapon powers having nuclear missiles pointed at each on hair trigger alert. It is now at the closest it has ever been to the destruction of everything we know. 

 

How long can this situation continue? 

 

Our Senators, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, can make a difference by cosponsoring Senate Resolution (S. Res.) 323, as did Senate Democratic Whip, Dick Durban. This resolution, sponsored by Senator Markey of Massachusetts, calls for a halt in a very dangerous nuclear arms race and negotiations leading toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Cosponsoring S. Res. 323 would be following the good example made by Representatives Larson, Delauro, and Hayes who cosponsored the companion House Resolution, calling for us to move away from the brink of nuclear war.  

 

As nuclear threats escalate around the planet we must take action by calling our Senators and asking them to cosponsor S. Res. 323. You can contact your senator online or reach their offices through the capital switchboard at 202-224-3121.

 

Please go to http://www.preventnuclearwar.org for more information. Find out what Back from the Brink is doing and how you can get involved.

 

Watch this short and powerful talk by Dr. Ira Helfand explaining what nuclear war would look like. Dr. Ira Helfand, MD, is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapon (ICAN) – the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and past President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) – the founding partner of ICAN and itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. He is also co-founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s U.S. affiliate, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Back from the Brink campaign. In 2023 he received the Gandhi King Ikeda Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College. He has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the World Medical Journal on the medial consequences of nuclear war and has lectured about nuclear war in Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and across Europe and North America. He spoke at the 2013 and 2014 International Conferences on the Humanitarian

Impact of Nuclear Weapons and chaired the session on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons at the UN Open Ended Working Group in 2016 that lead to the negotiation of the Treaty on the

Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the following year. Dr. Helfand was educated at Harvard College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and recently retired as staff physician at Family Care Medical

Center. He lives with his wife, Deborah Smith, a medical oncologist, in Leeds, MA, U.S., and has two grown sons and two grandchildren.

 

Joe Wasserman is a Sierra Club member.

Editor’s Note: Read last month’s article “A House of Dynamite” to learn more about S. Res. 323 - Urging the United States to lead the world back from the brink of nuclear war and halt and reverse the nuclear arms race