Dr. Helen Caldicott – physician, author, lecturer, founder of prominent environmental, peace, and women’s organizations – to speak in Albuquerque and Santa Fe
Press Release
The Los Alamos Study Group is pleased to host two public talks by Dr. Helen Caldicott, in Albuquerque (March 20) and Santa Fe (March 21). Times and locations are below.
For the last four decades Dr. Caldicott has played a uniquely important role in the politics of nuclear weapons and nuclear power worldwide. Her seven books, thousands of public talks, and countless interviews have been hugely influential in the global movement for nuclear disarmament. In the 1980s the movement she helped inspire was a significant international force, specifically affecting the nuclear policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. That movement, and Dr. Caldicott, helped lead the way to the nuclear rapprochement that marked the end of the Cold War.
Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938, Dr. Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1975 and subsequently was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and on the staff of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Mass., until 1980 when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war.
Dr. Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, including the Lannan Foundation 2003 Cultural Freedom Prize and 21 honorary doctorates. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Linus Pauling. In April of this year she will receive the Nuclear Free Future Award for Lifetime Achievement, in Berlin.
Dr. Caldicott is a co-founder of the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and the umbrella group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), composed of PSR and similar organizations in other countries. She founded the U.S.-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI), which evolved into Beyond Nuclear. She also founded Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND), now Women’s Action for New Directions.
The Smithsonian Institute named Dr. Caldicott one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. Further background on Dr. Caldicott can be found at http://www.helencaldicott.com/about.htm.
Tickets are a $10 and can be purchased at the door. Attendance is limited to the first 150 persons Albuquerque) and 180 persons (Santa Fe). Helen’s books will be on sale before and after both events.
Sunday, March 20th, 6-8 pm: “If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Save the Earth,” presentation at The Outpost Performance Space, 210 Yale SE, Albuquerque, 2 blocks south of Central Avenue.
Monday, March 21st, 6:30-8:30 pm: “If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Save the Earth,” presentation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Road, Santa Fe, one block north of Cordova Rd between Galisteo Street and Barcelona Road.
“Helen’s message and personal example of hope, warning, and compassionate engagement is especially important and inspiring as we face the converging crises before us. We are very pleased to have her here,†said Study Group Director Greg Mello. “Helen has a unique ability to help people get beyond barriers to personal engagement and the fulfillment that can come from it.
“The nuclear weapons establishment believes it owns New Mexico. Its leaders, many of whom I know, hope our complaisant population and weak institutions will make it easy to build new factories and churn out a new generation of nuclear warheads with which to threaten the planet.
“A $7 billion plutonium complex to design and build nuclear components for those warheads is now planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory. If built, it would be by far the most expensive infrastructure project ever conceived in New Mexico, except our two interstate highways. It would turn Los Alamos into a full-scale plutonium maquiladora and put a dangerous and growing nuclear borderland in the State’s very heart. In constant dollars, this project greatly exceeds the original Manhattan Project in New Mexico in cost. Once begun, you can kiss the promise of significant “green jobs” goodbye.
“This proposed giant complex is a “small†but pivotal part of a $200 to $300 billion policy developed by President Obama to completely renew and expand the U.S. nuclear warhead production complex and its laboratories and build a new generation of bombers, submarines, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and advanced reentry vehicles.
“Our deepening economic decline will prevent the completion of most of this, but this misguided and pathological effort will in the meantime be a potent means for taking tax dollars from human and environmental needs and putting into the pockets of a relatively few people. It is also a highly-potent means for concentrating political power in a few specialized corporations and their bought-and-paid-for political representatives.
“These nuclear policies comprise an in-your-face class issue; they have severe direct and indirect environmental impacts; they involve fraud, deception of Congress, and other corruption; and they involve the attempted re-colonization of an entire state – ours, where almost half of all warhead spending occurs. The Obama nuclear renaissance would be an essentially permanent dark age for New Mexico. We can’t let that happen.â€
Quitting smoking in Taos County
Clean Air Works in Taos County will host a lunch meeting on Friday, March 18th at 12:00 Noon – 1:30 p.m. at the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative Meeting Room, 118 Cruz Alta Rd., Taos.
Learn the best techniques and resources for stopping smoking. The meeting is free and open to the public. The meeting will be of special interest to: 1) health care providers, 2) employers, 3) anyone who smokes or uses smokeless tobacco, 4) people who want to help others to stop smoking. Lunch reservations can be made by calling (575) 737-2000 or e-mailing cleanairworks@kitcarson.net
Clean Air Works in Taos County is supported by the NM Department of Health, Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Program.
Janie Corinne, MPH
Clean Air Works in Taos County
HC 81, Box 6002
Questa, New Mexico 87556
(575) 586-2229
(575) 770-6275 mobile