In 1971 Helen Caldicott, a young physician, alerted the Australian media to the effects of fallout from nuclear tests
in the Pacific The French were still blasting nuclear bombs into the atmosphere, eight years after such testing had been
banned. It was Caldicott's first campaign.
After the above-ground tests had ended, she wanted to focus on her newly founded cystic fibrosis clinic and bringing
up her children. But the next toxic pollutant was just around the corner: uranium mining.
"With three children of my own I was determined to do what I could to prevent children developing leukemia, other
malignancies, or genetic disease from exposure to uranium or its fission products". She and her husband moved to the United
States in 1975 where Helen began to lecture on the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel chain. "I was saying things that
some people didn't want to hear." Despite the nuclear industry propaganda that nuclear power was safe and clean, her
message got through to many, backed up by medical facts and figures.
In 1978, Helen Caldicott met in Boston with other physicians who agreed with her that nuclear power was a medical
issue. They revived the organization "Physicians for Social Responsibility." In 1979, one day after Three Mile Island,
the New England Journal of Medicine ran an advertisement from PSR which enumerated the medical dangers of nuclear
power and called for nuclear disarmament, the phase-out of nuclear reactors and a moratorium on new ones. PSR's membership
exploded.
"Nuclear Madness", Caldicott's first book, became an almost instant classic. Describing the insidious influence of
the nuclear power industry and the US government's complicity in medical "experiments" using nuclear material, the
author called on people to fight against that madness, both for their own sake and for that of future generations.
Helen Caldicott, a highly gifted speaker, motivates people to act by stirring their moral outrage, empowering
them to take action. Her calls for anti-nuclear action include the films Eight Minutes to Midnight and
If You Love This Planet (Academy Award 1983).
In 1979 NATO's Pershings and cruise missiles escalated the nuclear arms race. "This was much worse than I had
envisaged", she wrote. "I now knew that my efforts at alerting people to the dangers of nuclear war must be redoubled. I felt
somewhat desperate."
"A Desperate Passion" – the title of Caldicott's autobiography – turned Helen Caldicott into a leading figure of
the Nuclear Freeze movement in the U.S. and in Europe. She inspired anti-nuclear campaigns by physicians in eight
European countries; in 1980 they founded International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Five years
later, IPPNW won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Helen returned to Australia in 1987, making it her base of operations as she continues her energetic globetrotting.
Helen is one of the world's few antinuclear campaigners who addresses all aspects of the nuclear fuel chain: uranium mining, nuclear
power, nuclear weapons and depleted uranium weapons with a special focus on the health dangers posed by ionising
radiation. She doesn't back down from power, often directly chiding politicians in her books, films, TV appearances and
lectures. She tells us: "What I feel so strongly about – if you decide to do something you can do it. You can change the
world and I did help change the world."
Helen's Nuclear-Free Future Lifetime Achievement Award marks no end of her activist committment – but rather
jewels her long and on-going career with yet another exclamation point.
"Dr. Helen Caldicott has the rare ability to combine science with passion, logic with love, and urgency with
humour...At the dark dawn of another war without end, it is once again time to listen up as she sounds the global alarm."
– Naomi Klein
"Helen Caldicott has been my inspiration to speak out."
–Meryl Streep
is presented by the
Franz Moll Foundation
for the Coming Generations
to
for her many decades
of tireless public advocacy
protecting the earth and its peoples
from the technologies of death
