Primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of genocidal weapons.

Abstract

For certain countries the availability of the technology and know-how has turned the nuclear weapons option, as well as the possession of chemical and bacteriological weapons, into a threatened reality of the present. Once a country embarks on a 'solution' such as this to its security problems, the countries in conflict with it are obliged to follow suit, thus accelerating the process of development and proliferation of similar weapons. Fear stimulates the creation of a spiral of false security that will inevitably result, if left to its 'natural' forces, in world-wide destruction. Nuclear war is examined here from an epidemiological viewpoint as a disease with two corresponding different possibilities: (a) the natural history of the disease, and (b) modifications produced by primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Medical responsibility has no alternative but to work for the prevention of the incurable consequences of nuclear war.