The Medical Journal of Australia joins with other journals to call for elimination of nuclear weapons
The world’s health and medical community is being urged to take a stand against nuclear weapons, with 11 of the world’s leading health and medical journals publishing an editorial about the increasing threat of nuclear war.
The Medical Journal of Australia joins with other journals to call for elimination of nuclear weapons
The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) has joined other health and medical journals to call for urgent steps to curb the threat of nuclear war and for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The editorial, co-authored by the MJA’s Editor-in-Chief Professor Virginia Barbour, was published in the MJA today.
“As editor-in-chief of Australia’s premier medical journal, I believe it is right that the MJA takes a stand on this issue,” Professor Barbour said.
“We are living in a time of intense fighting in Ukraine and increased tensions on the Korean peninsula.
“These concerning developments have prompted leaders across the health and medical community to highlight that any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic for humanity.”
The MJA was pleased to join with other prominent journals to advocate for this issue, Professor Barbour said.
“It is important to see call a coordinated for action from a variety of international journals such as The Lancet, the BMJ, the New England Journal of Medicine and the JAMA,” she said.
The publication of the editorial is timely as it coincides with two key events, Professor Barbour said.
“The editorial coincides with both the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Preparatory Committee Meeting and the 78th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan,” Professor Barbour said.
Current nuclear arms control and non-proliferation efforts are inadequate to protect the world’s population, the editorial reads.
“Progress has been disappointingly slow and the most recent NPT review conference in 2022 ended without an agreed statement,” the editorial reads.
The modernisation of nuclear weapons also poses a threat of nuclear war by design, error, or miscalculation, it reads.
“Modernisation of nuclear arsenals could increase risks: for example, hypersonic missiles decrease the time available to distinguish between an attack and a false alarm, increasing the likelihood of rapid escalation,” it reads.
The health community has a crucial role in efforts to reduce the risk of nuclear war and must continue to play its part, the editorial reads.
“In the 1980s the efforts of health professionals, led by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), helped to end the Cold War arms race by educating policy makers and the public on both sides of the Iron Curtain about the medical consequences of nuclear war.”
The editorial calls on states with nuclear weapons to adopt a no first use policy, to take their nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and urges all states involved in current conflicts to pledge “publicly and unequivocally that they will not use nuclear weapons in these conflicts”.
Read the editorial in The Medical Journal of Australia.
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