Full Text of the Open Letter to President Bush by Physicians for Social Responsibility

We write to you as physicians and health professionals deeply engaged with caring for our fellow humans and the social, economic, and ecological systems essential to health and well being. We are profoundly concerned about the recent pronouncements and policies of your Administration regarding nuclear weapons. We are particularly disturbed by your unilateral threats to use nuclear weapons against sovereign nations. According to the International Court of Justice, this is both morally indefensible and legally impermissible.

We also strongly oppose policies enunciated in your Administration's recent Nuclear Posture Review which envision the use, production, and possible testing of nuclear weapons throughout the 21st Century. This stance clearly flouts long-standing U.S legal obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and can only stimulate the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Proliferation in turn will increase the ability of terrorists to obtain nuclear devices.

We are especially troubled since numerous authoritative medical studies have indicated that a nuclear war would threaten human survival and that even a single nuclear explosion would overwhelm medical facilities and cause unacceptable mass casualties in any city on Earth. Such callous disregard for the moral values of humankind and for innocent human life must not be tolerated. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate vehicle of indiscriminate violence. As such, their use is morally indefensible. As a number of prestigious medical and public health societies and organizations have urged over the years, nuclear weapons must be abolished.

We specifically call upon you as President of the United States, the largest nuclear power, to lead the nation in living up to its finest traditions of preserving life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead of relying on the false security of new kinds and new uses of or nuclear weapons, we call upon you to take the lead in world nuclear disarmament efforts. The firm moral and legal line between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons must never be blurred. The world needs sharper distinctions between nuclear and conventional weapons, and stronger barriers to their use. We advocate in the strongest possible terms that you and the U.S. government not lead our nation and the world into an era in which the use of these ultimate weapons of mass destruction is made more likely.

Sincerely,

Robert K. Musil, PhD
MPH Executive Director and CEO
Physicians for Social Responsibility

Roy Farrell, MD
President
Physicians for Social Responsibility