THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE TO WARMONGERS

The award of the 1985 peace prize to the Soviet-subservient Physicians Against Nuclear War is an affront to decent people. Its parent organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, is well known to AtE readers (see Doctors Against Health, $2 from Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306). It encourages doctors to betray their Oath of Hippocrates by refusing to tend the wounded in an emergency, preaches the better-red-than-dead philosophy, and is a willing loudspeaker for Soviet deception in the US.

Nobel Prizes are not, of course, given for integrity: Mikhail Sholokhov (literature, 1965) rewrote subsequent editions of his novel And Quiet Flows the Don as directed by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party; George Wald, who (like everybody else) gets an internal dose of 25 mrem/year from his own flesh and blood, stood in front of the TV cameras at TMI in March 1979, had himself billed as a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology, and screamed to a confused public "There is no safe level of radioactivity!"; and Linus Pauling had to settle out of court for $575,000 after he was accused of destroying evidence refuting his tall tales about vitamin C [AtE 8/84].

But then, Wald did not get his Nobel prize for scare mongering, and Pauling did not get his for destroying evidence.

Hopes were high, therefore, when the Disarmament Conference resumed on October 14, 1933. Sir John Simon offered a plan, concerted with France, that for five years there should be international supervision of arms, without disarmament or rearmament [a freeze, P.B.]; after this probationary period, there would be disarmament, bringing all to equality with Germany. Germany, it seemed, might accept, and was even committed to doing so by Hitler's speech of May 17. In the nick of time Hitler slipped out of the trap ... and on the afternoon of October 14 gave notice of Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations... It was the first of Hitler's gambles. He expected dire consequences: a French invasion of the Ruhr, a Polish invasion of East Prussia. Nothing happened. He had won his first diplomatic victory, and could expect several more such easy triumphs.

One year later, Henderson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Ten years later, he was rewarded with 30 million dead.

But cheer is on the way. A few days after you get this issue, the real doctors of America will convene in Los Angeles (11/3-6): the 3^rd annual seminar of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness will be addressed by Daniel Graham, Bruce Herschensohn, Reed Irvine, Cresson Kearney, Max Klinghoffer, Howard Maccabee, Jane Orient, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and others. I believe I speak for all readers when I salute these genuine guardians of peace: for they do not scare people with nuclear war, but work to prevent it.