This is the conclusion of Helen Caldicott’s keynote presentation at a public forum in Taipei, Taiwan, on July 7, 2013. Caldicott covers essential knowledge: How do radioactive iodine, strontium and plutonium affect the body? Why do the body and placenta mistake plutonium for iron and strontium for calcium and embed them in our organs and the fetus? Caldicott also covers the latest studies on birds in the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones by biologist Timothy Mousseau and she ends with a personal account of how she, as young med-student, was moved by the novel On The Beach. The author, Nevil Shute, describes how a nuclear world war III can poison the earth with radiation.
The organizer of the Taipei forum was an antinuclear alliance of mothers called Mom Loves Taiwan. They are campaigning to prevent the opening of yet another nuclear power plant on Taiwan and are seriously concerned about the ongoing radioactive releases from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant and the risks of a future earthquake.
There are very few people currently alive who have given as much time and effort to the whole complex of the nuclear nightmare as Helen Caldicott; beginning with atmospheric bomb testing to nuclear war to nuclear power to nuclear weapons in space, and to climate change. In 1971 Caldicott played a major public role in Australia’s opposition to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. In 1978 she left her position teaching pediatrics at Harvard Medical School to fully immerse herself in nuclear disarmament and joined those who were ending the cold war. She formed several important anti-nuclear organizations, raised funds for important research and publications, and is the author of several books, among them Nuclear Madness, If You Love This Planet, The New Nuclear Danger and Nuclear Power is Not the Answer.
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