FULLERTON : Activist Says Earth Is ‘Terminally Ill’

Anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott warned about 350 Cal State Fullerton professors Monday that Earth, “the terminally ill planet,” faces death within 10 years from pollution.

“Money spent on (nuclear) arms needs to be directly transferred to saving the environment,” said Caldicott, founder of Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament and president emeritus of the Physicians for Social Responsibility.

An Australian pediatrician and mother of three, she is best known to her supporters as the “mother of the nuclear freeze movement.” She once described herself as “a physician practicing preventive medicine,” and her patient is the planet.

At the seminar, “Technology, the Environment and Our Future,” Caldicott described Southern California as “the dirtiest place I’ve been.” Californians, who are becoming accustomed to increasing levels of smog, are “being boiled alive,” she said.

Since 1986, Caldicott has directed her attention toward ecological problems in Australia.

She said that 60% of the men in Queensland suffer from skin cancer, because of a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica.