Caldicott, Helen (Mary) 1938-

views updated

CALDICOTT, Helen (Mary) 1938-

PERSONAL: Born August 8, 1938, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; daughter of Philip (a factory manager) and Mary Mona Enyd (an interior designer; maiden name, Coffey) Broinowski; married William Caldicott (a physician), December 8, 1962; children: Philip, Penny, William, Jr. Education: University of Adelaide, received B.S. (surgery), M.B. (medicine), 1961.

ADDRESSES: Home—245 Highland Ave. W, Newton, MA 02165. Office—P.O. Box 348, Arlington, MA 02174. E-mail—info@nuclearpolicy.org.

CAREER: Physician, activist, and author. Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, intern, 1961; general practice of medicine in South Australia, 1963-65; Harvard University Medical School, Cambridge, MA, fellow in nutrition, 1966-68, instructor in pediatrics, 1977-80; Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston, MA, fellow in nutrition, 1967-68, fellow in cystic fibrosis, 1975-76, associate, 1977-80; Adelaide Children's Hospital, Adelaide, intern, 1972, resident, 1973-74, founder and head of cystic fibrosis clinic, 1975-76. Appeared in documentary films, including If You Love This Planet, National Film Board of Canada, 1982, and In Our Hands, Action for Nuclear Disarmament, 1982; guest on radio and television programs, including Merv Griffin Show, Donahue, Today Show, Good Morning, America, 60 Minutes, and Nightline. Ran unsuccessfully for seat in Australian Parliament, 1990.

MEMBER: American Thoracic Society, Royal Australian College of Physicians, Physicians for Social Responsibility (president, 1978-83; president emeritus, 1983—), Medical Campaign against Nuclear War (founder), Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (founder), Women's Party for Survival (founder).

AWARDS, HONORS: Prize for clinical medicine from British Medical Association, 1960; Consumer Action Now award, Margaret Mead Award from Environmental Defense Center, Thomas Merton Prize for Peace from Thomas Merton Society, and Humanist of the Year Award from Ethical Society of Boston, all 1980; Gandhi Peace Prize from Promoting Enduring Peace, and SANE Peace Award from SANE Education Fund, both 1981; Humanist of the Year Award from American Association of Humanistic Psychology, and Audubon "A" Award from Massachusetts Audubon Society, both 1982; Woman of the Year Award from Boston College, Peace Award from American Association of University Women, Humanitarian Award from Massachusetts Psychological Association, Elizabeth Blackwell Award from American Medical Women's Association, Abraham L. Sacher Award from Brandeis University, Ansel Adams Award from Second Biennial Fate of the Earth Conference, and Outstanding Writer Award from Massachusetts Bay Association of Writing Programs, all 1984; President's Award from Hofstra University, Integrity Award from John-Roger Foundation, Peace Medal Award from United Nations Association of Australia, and Nobel Peace Prize nomination, all 1985; International Year of Peace Award from Australian Government, 1986; numerous honorary degrees from institutions, including Antioch University, Emmanuel College, Russell Sage College, State University of New York at Binghamton, University of Linkoeping (Linkoeping, Sweden), and University of Notre Dame.

WRITINGS:

(With Nancy Herrington and Nahum Stiskin) Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do!, Autumn Press, 1978, new edition published as Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do; With a New Chapter on Three Mile Island, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980, revised edition, Norton (New York, NY), 1994.

Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War, Morrow (New York, NY), 1984.

If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth, Norton (New York, NY), 1992.

A Passionate Life, Random House Australia (Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia), 1996, published as A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

(Author of foreword) Gayle Greene, The Woman Who Knew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secrets of Radiation, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1999.

The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex, New Press (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Since her 1971 fight to stop France from testing nuclear weapons over the southern Pacific Ocean, Australian-born physician Helen Caldicott has become "probably the most effective antinuclear speaker" in America, averred Nobel Prize-winning biologist George Wald in a 1979 Ms. article. Caldicott's speeches on the health dangers posed by nuclear fallout helped convince many Australians to protest and end the testing; she later led the successful effort to halt uranium mining and exporting in that country also. Since moving to the United States in 1977, Caldicott has focused much of her energy on protesting against nuclear weapons, pushing for a freeze on the building of such weapons, and urging all Americans to become involved in the debate over nuclear technology. In Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do!, written with Nancy Herrington and Nahum Stiskin, Caldicott states: "I believe it imperative that the American public understand that nuclear power generation is neither safe, nor clean, nor cheap; that new initiatives are urgently required if we are to avoid nuclear catastrophe in a world armed to the teeth with atomic weapons; and that these initiatives must begin with awareness, concern, and action on the part of the individual citizen. . . . We must educate ourselves . . . then move powerfully as individuals accepting full responsibility for preserving our planet for our descendants."

Caldicott's own awareness of nuclear hazards stemmed in part from her experiences as a pediatrician. In treating patients stricken with cystic fibrosis and leukemia, she realized that even one radioactive particle could damage a cell or a gene, thus making such genetic diseases and cancers more likely. "I decided that promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons and power was part of practicing . . . real preventive medicine," she told an interviewer in Ms. The results of her decision included reviving the antinuclear organization Physicians for Social Responsibility and leaving her medical practice to devote more time to educating the public.

Concern for her children also motivated Caldicott to activism. "When my husband and I decided to have our first child, I had nightmares thinking that the baby would live to see the horrors that I'd read about as a girl," she once told a CA interviewer. Reading scientific studies of nuclear issues helped solidify her opposition to the technology, showing how weapons tests and routine reactor operation produce substances that affect the entire food chain. Caldicott was particularly troubled to discover that children face the greatest dangers from radiation. Because children are still growing, their cells reproduce quickly; a radiationdamaged cell only reproduces more damaged—cancerous—cells.

From the beginning of her campaign for a nuclear-free world, Caldicott has focused on a personal approach to sharing what she has learned. As a physician and as a parent she addresses church groups, college students, hospital staffs, and labor unions. She reaches many through magazine and newspaper articles, and she speaks on radio and television news programs. Commented Wald in Ms., "She has a gift for making the hard scientific facts meaningful to the public." Using blackboard drawings, Caldicott explains the technological and medical realities, and data collected from government reports and scientific studies fuel her arguments. Yet even while she conveys hard facts, Wald observed, "she doesn't hesitate to raise moral questions or display intense emotions about these matters that are life-threatening in the extreme." To those who criticize her emotional appeal, Caldicott offered her defense in a Los Angeles Times article: "This is a very emotional issue. . . . To be unemotional about the end of the world is sick."

Caldicott also spreads her message with her books, which have been deemed useful educational tools. In the New York Times Book Review Philip M. Boffey described Nuclear Madness as "a primer on the medical hazards of nuclear fission." The critic questioned some of Caldicott's assertions, but he also acknowledged the book's "undeniable strengths," among them clarity, simplicity, a dispassionate tone, and attention to neglected issues. For example, among the issues she discusses is the disposal of radioactive waste; she notes that "even if unbreakable, corrosion-resistant containers could be designed, any storage site on earth would have to be kept under constant surveillance by incorruptible guards, administered by moral politicians living in a stable, warless society, and left undisturbed by earthquakes, natural disasters, or other acts of God for no less than half a million years." Nuclear Madness was revised and updated in 1994.

In Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War Caldicott analyzes the intricacies of defense strategy and the capabilities of nuclear arsenals worldwide. She offers several explanations for the U.S.-USSR arms race and suggests that human nature must change to prevent the annihilation of mankind. Taylor Branch, writing in the New York Times Book Review, faulted the author's diagnosis as superficial and criticized her emotional leaps between denunciations and religious appeals, but nonetheless judged Caldicott's arguments regarding specific arms issues convincing. "Caldicott is at her best," Branch reflected, "when she goes into the maw of the doomsday machine itself to describe the missile systems, nuclear warheads and military theories in their deadliest applications." Branch also hailed the author's contention that "the logical consequence of the preparation for nuclear war is nuclear war." In 1995, shortly after the publication of this book, Caldicott was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth is Caldicott's guide to saving the planet from nuclear war and environmental disaster. Drawing on her background as a medical doctor, she first diagnoses the ills of the planet and then outlines a comprehensive plan to save Earth from ourselves. In the final chapter of the book, she recommends that the planet's human residents take up the four "L's" to heal the planet: love, learn, live, and legislate.

A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography chronicles Caldicott's personal and professional trials and triumphs—from a strict childhood where her mother beat her for small infractions to her success in negotiating arms treaties with heads of state. Caldicott writes about how, at the age of nineteen, she read Nevil Shute's novel On the Beach, a haunting tale of five people who are waiting to die following a nuclear attack. The horror of the novel stuck with her, and she decided that she would become a medical doctor in order to help as many people as possible. Her grandmother had been the first woman to graduate from medical college in Melbourne, and Caldicott herself was one of the first female physicians to practice in her native Australia. She soon began her second career as a crusader, talking to women's groups about health issues and the dangers of venereal disease, and she was seen by many as strident. As she gradually became more concerned with the potential effects of a nuclear war, she became a crusader on this front, too, founding anti-nuclear groups and eventually winning audiences with leaders like Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. At the same time that she was becoming more renowned professionally, however, Caldicott's personal life fell apart, and she and her husband of twenty-five years divorced. A Desperate Passion ends with its author's reflections on becoming a single person. Patricia D'Alessandro wrote in the Bloomsbury Review that "Caldicott is an iconoclast who has struggled to rise above the patriarchy in medicine, politics, the peace movement, and her private life. . . . She is endowed with a passion that goes beyond the call of duty, one that could very well be the most important call to arms that we face."

In 2002 Caldicott published The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Miltary-Industrial Complex, which not only provides the general reader with a solid grounding in the Republican Bush administration's defense programs and various weapons projects but also alerts the public to the dire consequences of allowing the U.S. government to continue producing massive amounts of nuclear weapons. The book focuses on the connection between the American weapons arsenal and large corporations, as well as the millions of tax dollars spent on nuclear-weapons projects. Caldicott also clearly explains the medical implications Americans potentially face from carcinogenic nuclear waste. Donna Seaman, a critic for Booklist, called The New Nuclear Danger a "meticulous, urgent, and shocking report" about nuclear arms in the United States.

Through her writings and lectures Caldicott "has captured the hearts and minds of people around the world," stated scientist Freeman Dyson in the New Yorker. "You cannot brush aside her message as the emotional outpouring of a fanatic. She speaks from a solid basis of medical experience." In December of 1982 Caldicott won a lengthy private meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, but she left frustrated because Reagan was "not receptive at all to what I had to say," she recalled in Missile Envy. Explained Dyson: "There is prejudice and antipathy on both sides. The military establishment looks on the peace movement as a collection of ignorant people meddling in a business they do not understand, while the peace movement looks on the military establishment as a collection of misguided people protected by bureaucratic formality from all contact with human realities. Both these preconceptions create barriers to understanding." Reflecting on what she has achieved and what remains to be done, Caldicott urges in Missile Envy: "It is time for people to rise to their full moral and spiritual height, to take the world on their shoulder like Atlas. . . . Think how much Americans could achieve by using . . . the democracy they have inherited from their forebears. All it takes is willpower and determination. . . . Think of what we are about to destroy."

For an interview with Caldicott, please see Contemporary Authors, Volume 124.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

American Women in Science, 1950 to the Present, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Caldicott, Helen, Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War, Morrow (New York, NY), 1984.

Caldicott, Helen, Nancy Herrington, and Nahum Stiskin, Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do!, Autumn Press, 1978, new edition published as Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do; With a New Chapter on Three Mile Island, Bantam (New York, NY), 1980, revised edition, Norton (New York, NY), 1994.

Contemporary Issues Criticism, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.