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Nobel prize winner speaks about peace

UM grad Bernard Lown a leader on nuclear disarmament

By Nick McCrea

Posted on March 27, 2008, at 12:00 a.m.

Adrianne Hess

One of the University of Maine's most distinguished alum came to the campus on Wednesday to give multiple lecturs on topics such as Peace Studies and Physicians and Social Responsiblity.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, leading cardiologist, inventor of the defibrillator, peace activist and 1942 University of Maine graduate Dr. Bernard Lown returned to his alma mater for a series of lectures and discussions starting Wednesday.

“He is arguably the most important graduate to come out of the University of Maine,” Honors College Dean Charlie Slavin said. The Honors College hosted the event after nearly five years of failed attempts to bring Lown to the university.

“He’s a very hard man to pin down, as you can imagine with all the things he does,” Slavin said.

In the first discussion of the series Wednesday morning, Lown told the story of how he became involved in fights against nuclear weapons and addressed how educators could improve peace studies and advocacy among students.

“I’m pleased that a group like this is planting seeds in fertile ground,” Lown said.

Acting Director for Peace Studies Tina Passman introduced Lown to the group of about 20, mostly consisting of Peace Studies professors and students. “We consider you one of our wisdom elders in the peace movement,” Passman said to Lown.

Lown’s involvement in peace activism started while he was working on the defibrillator. A friend convinced him to attend a presentation on nuclear weapons and nuclear war by 1959 Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker.

“Suddenly there was a change,” Lown said. “I realized that what’s important and what needs to be addressed is not sudden cardiac death, but the threat of the sudden death of humanity.”

In May of 1962, Lown and a group of other physicians published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which was later turned into a book titled “The Fallen Sky.” The study outlined a nuclear war scenario in which a megaton bomb is dropped on Boston.

“We came to horrifying conclusions,” Lown said. In the report, the doctors suggested the condition of people in the city would be so dire that emergency personnel should be allowed to kill victims of a nuclear attack “out of humanity,” because the number of injured or sick people would make it impossible to help everyone.

At the time, the study was so advanced that the military asked the doctors to advise them on the effects of a nuclear attack – nuclear weapons testing ended soon after.

Lown discussed his distaste with the current presidential administration, the war in Iraq and war in general.

“When I ask myself, ‘Why war?’ I define it as essentially state-sanctioned terrorism,” Lown said. He said the administration was practicing a “Columbian strategy” – named after explorer Christopher Columbus – in which individuals and nations don’t need to work for power and success, but “just take it by force.”

Lown said most of the United States’ conflicts have origins in its own past mistakes. “Name me one dictator from the past 50 years that America didn’t support when they came to power,” he said.

Lown expressed concern that the low level of activism in American society caused a divide between citizens and their government. He cited one of Karl Marx’s early essays, saying “capitalism leads to alienation” because people’s own interests cause them to fracture relationships with others in order to protect their assets.

He argued that while things look just as dire now for America as it did during the Red Scare and Vietnam, America has a good chance to survive because of the “deeply ingrained tradition of democracy” that has saved the nation in the past, because it eventually spurred activism.

Lown grew up in Lewiston, Maine and graduated from UMaine in 1942 with a degree in Zoology. He went on to become a cardiologist and, in 1959, created the first direct-current defibrillator.

He started the Lown Cardiovascular Center in Cambridge, Mass. and is a professor of cardiology emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health. Lown co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1960.

“Oh, and in his spare time he won the Nobel Peace Prize,” Slavin said. He received the award in 1985 for his work in co-founding International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He is the only Nobel Laureate to come out of UMaine.

The UMaine Alumni Association presents an annual Bernard Lown ’42 Humanitarian Award to graduates who excel in humanitarian service.

Lown was part of another panel later on Wednesday titled “Physicians and Social Responsibility” and a lecture titled “Global Activism in an Ailing World.”

He will sit in on a panel discussion about nuclear threats following Sept. 11, 2001, at 10 a.m. Thursday in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union.

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