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Abstract
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The ongoing conflict in Ukraine confirms how wars and armed conflicts are a serious threat to public health and environmental integrity. The crisis has made clear that nuclear war is closer than ever.
As people working in the biomedical field, we are urged to stress that any reasoning about just causes of war loses any hypothetical meaning when compared with the destructive potential of modern nuclear technology. The very concept of defence is not applicable to nuclear weapons, which, by their very nature, clearly violate all of the principles enshrined in international humanitarian law and the protocols of the Geneva Conventions.
Nuclear weapons cause immediate damage by death and injury that far exceeds the capacity for health care even in well organised settings. Global health-care infrastructure is not, and cannot, be prepared for the humanitarian catastrophe that would result from the use of these weapons.
The long-term damage to the health of the population and the environment could easily be beyond the resilience, not only of individual countries or territories, but of the entire world. As long as these weapons of mass destruction exist, humanity's survival is under threat...
Language: en |