In Memory of Dr. Bernard Lown, Physician to Us All

In my last article I talked about how my work with Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO), sustainable development and abolition of nuclear weapons (IPPNW/PSR/ICAN) comes together. It was about bringing people together to solve tough problems that impact all of us using technology to communicate different perspectives. I am continuing this theme because this week we lost a great human being. Dr. Bernard Lown (Bernie) was one of my most important role models. He died this week at the age of 99 after living an incredible life of sacrifice and noble effort (literally) to save Humanity (on both small and large scale) and IPPNW remembered him here. 

I met Dr. Lown through my work in Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and especially IPPNW, where he was co-founder and co-president for many years. In my earlier post, I described the importance of the physicians’ movement for prevention of nuclear war and climate change and how it had affected me. In the early 80’s, during a time of severe Cold War feelings and talk about winnable nuclear war, it was PSR and IPPNW’s work around the medical consequences of nuclear war that changed the discussion making it clear there could be no winners in a nuclear war. 

Prior to receiving the 1985 Nobel Prize for Peace, IPPNW received the 1984 Beyond War Award from an organization that I also worked with). Presented in a precedent-breaking live satellite “spacebridge” between San Francisco and Moscow, Dr. Lown in SF and Dr. Yevgeny Chazov in Moscow simultaneously received the award in front of American and Soviet audiences--highlighting that the US and USSR could work together. Vladimir Posner MC’d from Moscow and Richard Rathbun from SF. Dr. Lown’s speech was tremendously moving and helped me shift my local efforts in PSR to PSR’s international Federation, IPPNW.  The use of satellites by Beyond War for the award presentation foreshadowed Dr. Lown’s interest in them several years later.

As the first full-time medical student liaison to IPPNW, I spent a lot of time in the IPPNW Boston offices. They were situated in the old lying-in hospital across the street from Harvard Medical School (HMS). I had deferred my admission to HMS specifically to help IPPNW. Working closely with Dr. Lown, I could see his commitment and his unwavering passion for helping people. Many know Dr. Lown, an eminent cardiologist from his work saving cardiac patients, the Lown-Ganong-Levine Syndrome, his development of the direct current defibrillator, or his teaching at Harvard Medical School (a colleague described his teaching voice as “rabbinical”). However, I had the pleasure of witnessing his role modeling as a physician at the global level. 

Initially it was his, and a few other physicians’, relationships with Soviet doctors like Dr. Chazov that formed the basis of IPPNW. It created trust and collaboration that helped reduce fear in both societies and bring down the East-West divide. I tried to emulate that when I worked with Soviet medical students, Vladimir Popov and Vladimir Garkavenko to foster exchanges with Western students in 1985 and 1986 and later in 1990.

In 1987, Dr. Lown formed SatelLife to improve communications between health care providers in the developing world. At a time before internet and cell phones SatelLife created HealthNet which used low Earth orbit satellites to provide a form of email communication at low cost launching two satellites in 1991 and 1993. Being addicted to communicating while traveling in Africa, I had the opportunity to take advantage of HealthNet’s store and forward technology to send messages to my friends and colleagues in those early days.

In 1990, while at the Harvard School of Public Health, I worked again with my Soviet colleagues to bring together health students from the East (2nd Moscow Medical School and the Baltics) the West (Harvard School of Public Health) and South (University of Nairobi) to try to work together on a public health project in Kenya. Called Public Health and Diplomacy (PHD), this project highlighted some of the challenges we would face in bringing together a global effort for peace and development. It confirmed to me that the divide between East and West was actually much smaller than between the geopolitical North and South.

It was at the IPPNW World Congress in Mexico City in 1993, the first IPPNW Congress held in a Developing country, that the organization and Dr. Lown formally combined environment, peace and development, introducing the IPPNW triangle. The triangle had at its base the preservation of peace, but its sides showed the importance of protecting the environment and eliminating poverty. This immediately resonated with me and my experiences working to bridge both the East-West and the North-South divide.

Dr. Lown was always a strong supporter of the interaction between peace, health and development, but never took his eye off the most immediate threat to our common survival: nuclear weapons. He even co-authored a commentary in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine on the renewed threat of Nuclear Holocaust only weeks before his death.

For much of the first decade of IPPNW, Drs. Lown and Chazov would take the opportunity during the World Congresses of IPPNW to meet with world leaders and other dignitaries furthering the educational message of IPPNW. Traditionally, Dr. Lown’s aid-de-camp during these meetings would be Dr. Lachlan Forrow. Dr. Forrow was one of the first medical students that took part in IPPNW in its earliest days and his role continued to be quite influential over the years. During these Congresses, Dr. Forrow would assist Dr. Lown by managing his hectic schedule, helping to arrange the meetings with leaders, and otherwise be supportive. One year, after the birth of his child, Dr. Forrow was unable to join Dr. Lown for the World Congress in Hiroshima, and I had the honor to take his place. It was remarkable to sit in on these meetings with Dr. Lown and witness his passion in action. He never stopped working, and his exhortations to the rest of us to never give up, I took to heart (the recent entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which I discussed in my prior article was one vindication of never giving up). 

Although IPPNW continues to focus primarily on nuclear weapons and armed violence, I understood Dr. Lown’s vision to be a wholistic one, based on the understanding that true health can only be achieved through a lasting peace, protection of our environment, and reduced disparities between peoples. In his book Prescription for Survival: A doctor’s journey to end nuclear madness, he calls on all of us, not governments, to stand up for our common survival. Physicians might have a particular responsibility to speak out for the health of their patients and communities, but all of us need to act on each other’s behalf. We cannot wait for governments to lead us, we must demand a sustainable, healthy and safe planet not just for us, but for the unborn generations to come. 

Dr. Lown’s acceptance speech for the 1984 Beyond War award concluded with a fundamentally optimistic view:

“We are but transient passengers on this planet Earth. It does not belong to us. We are not free to doom generations yet unborn. We are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past or dim its future. Social systems do not endure for an eternity. Only life can lay claim to uninterrupted continuity. This continuity is sacred. We physicians who shepherd human life from birth to death are aware of the resiliency, the creativeness, and the courage that human beings possess. We have an abiding faith in what humanity creates, humanity can control. This perception provides optimistic purpose in reversing the direction of humankind’s potential tragic destiny.”

I am so grateful for the opportunity to have had role models like Dr. Bernard Lown and the many other physicians he was associated with. I am deeply sorry that the world has lost one so dedicated to the preservation and flourishing of our collective lives, but I am confident that his legacy lives on in the hearts of many today. Mine included.

Excerpts from Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1985 by Dr. Bernard Lown

?Never Whisper in the Presence of Wrong—Selections from Speeches on Nuclear War and Global Survival by Bernard Lown