Prescription for Survival

News

Harvard Gazette - September 18, 2008
HSPS honors Bernard Lown - scholarship, professorship established

Boston Globe - September 15, 2008
"Heart of the matter" - the creation of a $12 million endowment for the Lown Scholars Program

Sun Journal - August 31, 2008
"Saving Lives, building bridges, reflecting on his Lewiston roots" by Kathryn Skelton

IBISradio.org - airdate week of August 24, 2008
Prospects for nuclear abolition and preventing war.

Living On Earth - airdate week of August 8, 2008
Transcript and audio files of the interview done by Bruce Gellerman at Dr. Lown's home in Newton, MA.

Boston Globe - July 20, 2008
Dr. Lown on his lifework: "To me the profound moral purpose in life is that when you leave it, you've left the world a tiny bit better." The article, "Prescription for Good Deeds," written by Susan Chaityn Lebovits.

Reviews / Praise

Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher and political activist
"The former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Lee Butler, renouncing his lifelong commitment to nuclear arms, issued a plea for sanity: 'By what authority do succeeding generations of leaders in the nuclear-weapons states usurp the power to dictate the odds of continued life on our planet?' There is no better response than the dramatic story recounted here by the remarkable physician and peace activist Bernard Lown, whose courageous efforts have helped forge a path that might save the species from suicide, if enough people can muster the kind of will and determination and 'hardheaded optimism' that he has so impressively demonstrated, and eloquently recorded here."

Thomas B. Newman, M.D., M.P.H.
University of California, San Francisco
Read the full book review printed in New England Journal of Medicine - October 23, 2008
"The most important message I was left with after reading this book is this: the struggle against nuclear weapons was so much harder then. Lown, his colleagues in the IPPNW and PSR, and other activists have done most of the heavy lifting. Around the world, citizens and their leaders now know that a nuclear war would not be survivable, and the vast majority of people support the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Even former "cold warriors" such as George Schultz and Henry Kissinger have called for a world free of nuclear weapons. And yet, in 2008, the United States and Russia still maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on hairtrigger alert. As Lown puts it, "Responsible governments were holding entire nations hostage with a suspended sentence of mass murder. . . . By acquiescing to such policies we were engaging in the most abysmal collective failure of social responsibility. . . . Where was the unrelenting outcry against nuclearism from academic and religious leaders? Where were the voices of moral outrage?"

Juliet Schor, author of The overworked American and editor of Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the Twenty-first Century
"The doctors' movement to eliminate nuclear weapons was one of the most powerful but least well-known political developments of the last quarter-century. Lown's rendering is not only a fascinating insider's tale of his experience moving at the highest levels of government but a powerful analysis for breaking the stalemate of escalating militarism and post-9/11 conflict. One of the most important books of the twenty-first century."


Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
"This is just a remarkable history - personal and political - but a call to action. It is a plea to readers to speak up, to act. It tells us that history only takes a turn for the better when citizens, refusing to wait for governments, decide they must themselves join the long march toward a peaceful world."


Jay A. Winsten, PhD, Associate Dean, Harvard School of Public Health
"This fascinating saga of a small band of remarkable physicians who helped build an international movement to save humankind from nuclear destruction contains important lessons for mobilizing public opinion today to address crucial challenges such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. Bernard Lown's account of the profoundly important movement he helped to create is must-reading for anyone interested in how social and policy change comes about."

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