In 1980, following the Three Mile Island nuclear accident,
she left her medical career in order to concentrate on calling the
world's attention to what she refers to as the "insanity" of the nuclear arms race and the growing reliance on nuclear power.
In 1982, she was the subject of the controversial Oscar-winning National Film Board of Canada documentary on the dangers of nuclear weapons, entitled If You Love This Planet.[2]
Citing confidential memos, Caldicott says that the Hershey Foods Corporation was concerned about radiation levels in milk used in their products because of the proximity of the Three Mile Island accident to Hershey's Pennsylvania
factory. According to Caldicott, citing a 30 March 1979 study by the
Pennsylvania State University, College of Engineering, radiation
contaminants that fell on the Pennsylvania grass found their way into
the milk of the local dairy cows.[3] Caldicott noted this was contrary to the findings in the government official report[4] released shortly after the Three Mile Island disaster. Caldicott disputes this report in her book, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. Also in 1980, she founded the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the United States, which was later renamed Women's Action for New Directions. It is a group dedicated to reducing or redirecting government spending away from nuclear energy use towards what the group perceives as unmet social issues.
During her time in the United States from 1977 to 1986, Caldicott was
the founding president from 1978 to 1983 of Physicians for Social
Responsibility (founded originally in 1961 and dormant from 1970 to
1978), and she helped to recruit 23,000 doctors committed to educating
the public and their colleagues on the dangers of nuclear energy. She
also worked abroad to establish similar national groups that focused on
education about the medical dangers of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons
and nuclear war. The umbrella organisation International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She herself received the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association in 1982.
In 1995 Caldicott returned to the US where she lectured for the New School of Social Research on the Media, Global Politics, and the Environment. She also hosted a weekly radio show on WBAI (Pacifica) and became the Founding President of the STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation) Foundation. Her sixth book, The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex, was published in 2001. While touring with that book, she founded the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, headquartered in Washington, DC.
NPRI facilitated an ongoing public education campaign in the mainstream
media about the dangers of nuclear energy, including weapons and power
programs and policies. It was led by both Caldicott and Executive
Director Julie R. Enszer. NPRI attempted to create a consensus to end
all uses of nuclear energy by means of public education campaigns,
establishing a presence in the mainstream media, and sponsoring
high-profile symposia. NPRI has now morphed into Beyond Nuclear. In 2008
Caldicott founded the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear Free Future. The foundation hosts a weekly radio show called If You Love This Planet which originated on Huston station KPFT,
and now airs on dozens of U.S., Australian and Canadian stations, and
on its podcast feed website www.ifyoulovethisplanet.org. The foundation
also operates a website called NuclearFreePlanet.org with information
and data on nuclear power, Fukushima and nuclear weapons.[5] In May 2003, Caldicott gave a lecture entitled "The New Nuclear Threat" at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Distinguished Lecture Series.
A 2004 documentary film, 'Helen's War: portrait of a dissident',[6] provides a look into Dr. Caldicott's life through the eyes of her niece, filmmaker Anna Broinowski. Caldicott currently splits her time between the United States and
Australia and continues to lecture widely to promote her views on
nuclear energy use, including weapons and power. She has been awarded 21
honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. She was awarded the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2003, and in 2006, the Peace Organisation of Australia presented her with the inaugural Australian Peace Prize "for her longstanding commitment to raising awareness about the medical and environmental hazards of the nuclear age". The Smithsonian Institution
has named Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th
century. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, a progressive think tank in Spain.
A fully revised and updated edition of her 1992 book "If You Love This Planet" was published by W.W. Norton in September 2009.
Helen Caldicott is featured along with foreign affairs experts, space
security activists and military officials in interviews in Denis
Delestrac's 2010 feature documentary "Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space".
Dr. Caldicott spoke to a standing room only crowd at the Faulkner
Gallery in Santa Barbara on Friday March 23, 2012 on "The Medical
Implications of Fukushima, Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation".
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