Physicians for Social Responsibility

Physicians for Social Responsibility, known as “the active conscience of the medical community,” is a United States–based, nonprofit educational and public policy organization with more than 24,000 members, [Page 1119]who include medical and public health professionals and concerned citizens. Its members mutually endeavor to achieve three core missions: nuclear disarmament, a healthy environment, and an end to gun violence. Physicians for Social Responsibility was founded in 1961. One of its early achievements was to document the presence of Strontium 90, a by-product of atomic tests, in children's teeth. Armed with this finding, Physicians for Social Responsibility subsequently led the campaign to end atmospheric nuclear testing. During the 1970s and 1980s, the organization continued to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear war and became part of an international movement with the founding of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Concerned about new dangers facing the public, Physicians for Social Responsibility expanded its mission to include environmental health, global climate change, proliferation of toxins, and pollution. The organization also works to address firearms as a major public health menace, since gun violence kills 28,000 Americans a year.

Physicians for Social Responsibility professes adherence to the following tenets:

• Life is precious but vulnerable.
• Human life draws vital sustenance from the ecological and social systems in which it participates.
• Scientific knowledge must be used responsibly to protect life.
• Scientific knowledge about global threats often contains uncertainties. Decisions based on such knowledge must be evaluated in settings open to public review and evaluation.
• Citizens have a right to be informed participants in decisions made by government and industry that affect their health, welfare, and environment.
• The commitment to future generations requires that problems of violence and militarism, global environmental degradation, and socioeconomic inequities be addressed now and not be left as a legacy to the future.

Physicians for Social Responsibility also professes commitment to democratic political processes, an affirmation of the physician's role as a teacher to empower students and patients to choose healthy lifestyles and caring interactions, and to convince governments to choose policies that contribute to the public's health and security. The organization works locally and nationally through its grassroots network of 30 chapters spread across the United States. The local chapters act autonomously in their communities and work on at least two of the three core mission areas of the national organization. For example, the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility Chapter has more than 1,000 members in eastern Massachusetts who work on a issues relating to quality health care and access to it, environmental pollution, militarism and war, community and personal violence, and social justice and human rights. The Boston chapter's Human Health and the Environment Project (HHEP) focuses on the public health consequences of environmental pollution. Since 1992, the HHEP has been active in educating the medical community on the connections between environmental exposures and health, activating members to work to protect public health, assisting grassroots groups with technical and scientific issues relating to human health and environment issues, and participating in public policy debates.

...