Caldicott Spreads Sobering Message

By Catherine Podojil

Dr. Helen Caldicott was in Cleveland on February 1, just a year since her last visit. The Australian-born pediatrician is the president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group of doctors, medical personnel and concerned citizens whose goal is to prevent nuclear war by educating the public and lawmakers to the effects of such a war.

Caldicott's message is hard to listen to; hers is the voice of doom and the voice of hope. She is both totally possessed and completely sane-possessed by her mission, to prevent nuclear war, and sane because of the clarity of her vision that we can do something to prevent it. She and others in Australia got atmospheric testing stopped in the Pacific, and mothers in this country got atmospheric testing stopped when they learned what it was doing to milk.

Caldicott's message is simple: we are in danger of ending human civilization and all other life on this planet if the arms race is not controlled, if we do not disarm, if we do not destroy the weapons and learn new ways of resolving conflict. These ideas are not new. What Caldicott does is to remove the problem from the realm of ideas and personalize it. She describes to her listeners what would happen to their city if only one 20-megaton bomb were exploded over it.

A 20-megaton bomb exploded over Cleveland would dig a crater 800 feet deep and 3/4 mile wide. All people, other species, earth, and buildings below would be converted into radioactive fallout to circle around the stratosphere. All people and animals within a six-mile radius would be vaporized-turned into steam by the heat. Up to twenty miles, most of us would be killed and the rest lethally injured by the blast effects and the terrible heat. Survivors near the explosion would be deafened. Survivors further out who looked at the flash would be blinded. Human bodies would become missiles by the blast overpressures. Massive firestorms, fueled in part by all the secondary explosions-gas lines and supplies, oil supply depots--would cover over 3,000 square miles, creating killing winds and sucking the oxygen from every conceivable source. Underground shelters would become instant crematoria.

How could this medical calamity be treated? Most doctors would be killed, as they tend to congregate in urban areas. But even surviving doctors would not have the supplies needed to treat severe burns, fractures, blindness and deafness and the massive grief and other psychological devastation that would overwhelm survivors. How would they reach survivors when what is left of the buildings would be lying in what is left of the streets? Most survivors would be dead in days anyway, due tô radiation sickness or the trauma of their wounds. And the pain. There was some talk of stockpiling opium for treatment of severe pain. No one figured out how it was to be gotten to the patients, and as Dr. Caldicott pointed out, the plastic syringes used to inject the opium would have melted. For the few survivors who could travel, there would be nowhere to go because every other urban center or targeted area would be experiencing the same devastation.

The conclusion? Nuclear war is untreatable. Society, the ecostructure and the planet cannot recover from such an event. Therefore it is biologically and medically contra-indicated. It must be prevented. This is the goal of Caldicott's group.

Caldicott is particularly frightened about the Reagan Administration's public statements about "winnable" nuclear war, or a "limited" nuclear war in Europe (the Europeans are distressed by this, too, and have built a disarmament movement in the last eight months that puts us to shame). Caldicott believes that such concepts, along with the increased

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interest in civil defense, lead people into a false belief that they can survive a nuclear war.

Caldicott is concerned too that people are too numbed by fear to do anything about it. She understands this psychic numbing; it helps us get through the day. And it protects us from having to deal with the death of the species. Most of us have some form of personal immortality-children, work, friends, even returning to the life cycle-which comforts us in the face of our own death. But nuclear war wipes out all personal immortality because it destroys the human structure in which immortality can exist. As Caldicott says, "Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Handel, gone in one stroke, within an hour. I want to be right in the middle with my husband and

children". Were she herself to survive, "The grief would kill me”.

Although not ideologically a feminist, Caldicott refers to the world leaders as "aging men who have never seen a child born or a child die". She does not see them as evil, but ignorant and out of touch with their feelings. They must be; their families will die, too. She is encouraged by the response of Soviet doctors, who belong to a group similar to PSR and who are educating citizens in its goals.

Caldicott fears for children and feels we have let them down. We are able to dull ourselves against the fear, but children cannot. They know and they are (continued on page 10)

CWC Receives Grant

Cleveland Womens' Counsel has received an $89,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation to implement an innovative community divorce education program in Cuyahoga County in collaboration with the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court. The two-year project will provide divorcing couples and social service professionals with basic information about the legal, financial and emotional aspects of divorce.

One of only several such programs in the nation, this divorce education project grew out of a threemonth planning grant to determine the most productive use of the landmark research study Divorce Awards and Outcomes: A Study of Pattern and Change in Cuyahoga County, 1965-1978. Cleveland Women's Counsel worked with Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court in this endeavor.

According to Cinthia Schuman, Executive Director of Cleveland Women's Counsel, the search revealed an obvious need for an education program dealing with the legal, financial and emotional aspects of divorce. "Finally, divorcing couples will have easy access to information on the divorce process and on community resources available to help

families undergoing divorce. In addition, we plan to inform social service professionals about the various facets of divorce and the professional's role in helping with divorce-related problems".

The Court also recognizes that it needs to maintain statistical data on legal and financial arrangements of divorce, characteristics of divorcing parties and aspects of the divorce process. Assistance in that endeavor is an important objective of this project.

The Divorce Education Program has two major components. The first component is a monthly presentation on divorce, including an orientation to the Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court. This presentation is for divorcing parties and will be held at the Court. The second major component is training workshops for social service professionals on legal and financial aspects of divorce and sources of community help. Both components will be supported by literature developed especially for this program. Once the project is ready to be implemented, brochures on the Cuyahoga County Divorce Education Program will be distributed to all parties filing for divorce, domestic relations attorneys, law firms and major social service agencies in Cuyahoga County.

Committee on behalf of The Women's Openhouse Committee on What She Wants presents a

BENEFIT CONCERT

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FOR WOMEN ONLY

27 MARCH 1982 SATURDAY, 8PM

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...February March, 1982/What She Wants Page 5