Resources for Teachers and Students on Helen Caldicott
Prepare: Helen Caldicott, a physician, is a leading
antinuclear activist who teaches pediatrics at Harvard Medical
School. She maintains her own personal
website, on which her biography can be found.
Read:
Helen Caldicott's Architects
of Peace essay is excerpted from her 1992 book, If You
Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth. In it, she discusses
the importance for peace of understanding the beauty of
nature.
Explore: Helen Caldicott is the founder and president
emeritus of an organization called Physicians
for Social Responsibility, PSR, which seeks to protect
human health from the threats of nuclear war and other weapons
of mass destruction, as well as from global environmental
degradation and the epidemic of gun violence in today's
society. In 1985, PSR shared the Nobel Peace Prize with
an organization called "International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War."
Write: Helen Caldicott"s Architects of Peace
essay doesn't directly correlate the theme of developing
an aesthetic appreciation for nature with the theme of developing
a culture of peace. But is such a correlation possible?
Write a two-to-three page "concept paper" where
you attempt to unify these two areas of concern, either
by identifying a larger area of concern into which they
both fit, or by identifying points of commonality between
peace concerns and aesthetic concerns for the beauty of
the natural world.
Extend: Helen Caldicott is currently president of
the Nuclear
Policy Research Institute, NPRI, which was established
to educate the American public about the public health threat
involved in perpetuating nuclear weapons. The NPRI maintains
an active discussion board on its website, and offers a
variety of ways to become involved in its campaigns.
Additional Resource: In addition to founding Physicians
for Social Responsibility, Helen Caldicott also founded
an organization known as Women's
Action for New Directions, WAND, which was originally
called "Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament."
WAND seeks to empower women "to act politically to
reduce violence and militarism, and redirect excessive military
resources toward unmet human and environmental needs."
Biography of Helen
Caldicott
