In a campus-wide recognition of Earth Day, a Nobel Prize nominee spoke at the University of Wisconsin community Tuesday to address the dangers of nuclear power and weaponry in society today.

“The First Lady of the Nuclear Freeze Movement,” Helen Caldicott, is an anti-nuclear advocate who served as the president for the Physicians for Social Responsibility Organization. 

She was trained as a clinician, but said she dedicated her life’s work to changing trends in nuclear warfare and fostering a movement of peace. Using a clinician’s perspective, she said she was determined to find “the causes for today’s nuclear diseases in the brains of powerful men.”

Caldicott’s lecture included examining the relationship between political agendas and nuclear disasters.

“Our fascination with nuclear weaponry is the result of a masculine fascination with power and the glorification of war,” Caldicott said.

She also addressed the nuclear meltdowns in Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukishima, Japan. These disasters, Caldicott said, were the result of corporations refusing to dismantle faulty nuclear reactors. She said that by prolonging the life of compromised nuclear infrastructure, corporations could continue to sell their energy and make profits despite endangering civilians’ lives in the process.

Caldicott said the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons protects all countries’ right to use nuclear power. She said it currently prohibits the development of nuclear bombs because of the United States and Russia’s political interests rather than a true commitment to disarmament.

Bringing the audience’s attention back to the nuclear disaster in Fukishima in 2011, Caldicott said Japanese government knew for four months that earthquakes had damaged three of Fukashima’s nuclear reactors, but, she argued, the government did not take action because they did not want to create panic.

Caldicott added there is no way to measure the damaging health effects of radiation exposure. She said the public’s exposure to radiation today will disproportionately affect future generations because genetic mutations take years to manifest into physical symptoms.

Caldicott said she sees physicians as the forefront in the movement to dispel the myths around the global community’s reliance on unsustainable energies. She said with education about the devastating health consequences of global warming and nuclear power, individuals will be able to hold policy makers and corporations accountable for environmental degradation.

UW alumna Janet Parker, who attended the lecture, said she was grateful for the opportunity to hear Caldicott speak.

“I am so grateful to Dr. Caldicott for her tremendous knowledge as a physician and her honesty in speaking about how we need to confront the catastrophe of global warming and radiation from nuclear power and nuclear weapons,” Parker said.

Other members of the crowd also found Caldicott’s lecture to be an essential lesson for society, arguing her speech allows insight into a topic that can often be difficult to address.

Madison resident Glenn Miller said he found Caldicott’s talk refreshing.

“It was refreshing to hear a voice of truth, even if it was depressing news,” Mitroff said. “Where is the leadership in general? Or are they all psychotic”?

Ultimately, Caldicott said the greatest threats to public health are global warming, nuclear reactors and nuclear weaponry.

Caldicott is a pediatrician and has authored anti-nuclear power books that call for immediate nuclear disarmament.