Missile Envy
Helen Caldicott, signed by author
$18.00

s/t: The Arms Race & Nuclear War
Helen Mary Caldicott (born 8/7/38) is an Australian physician, author and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation and military action in general. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Caldicott became a leader in the antinuclear movement in the USA through her role in reviving the organization Physicians for Social Responsibility. She also helped to found several other organizations which worked to abolish controlled nuclear fission. In the 1980s, she was effective in raising support and bringing nuclear issues to the forefront. Caldicott splits her time between the USA and Australia and continues to lecture widely to promote her views on nuclear energy use, including weapons and power. Derived from a Kirkus review: Caldicott is a pediatrician who gave up her practice and her Harvard teaching post to head up Physicians for Social Responsibility, turning the organization into one of the most effective antinuclear groups around. Caldicott worries about an ensemble of factors: 1) the possibility of nuclear terrorism, a nuclear weapons accident, or the use of nuclear weapons between non-superpower states triggering a nuclear attack by one of the superpowers; 2) the destabilizing effects of cruise and Pershing II missiles, which make “limited” nuclear war feasible in some minds but also reduce attack-time on the Soviet Union and make instantaneous retaliation, or even first-strike policy, more likely; 3) the possibility of deranged individuals in the chain of command; 4) computer failure leading to retaliation against nonexistent attack; and more. Caldicott is a woman obsessed with the thought, which she sees as a likelihood, that the world will end at any moment; and she has to look to breakdowns in thought processes, mechanisms of denial, or socialization factors to explain why everyone else isn’t.