The medical responsibility in IPPNW according to Hippocratic ethos
by Maria Arvaniti Sotiropoulou
“Prevention is better than cure,” taught Hippocrates, the father of medicine. And this motto holds true for every illness. But is war an illness? Many philosophers regard it as a natural state in human history. The figures bear them out. Since 3600 BC, more than 14,000 wars have taken place, 3,500 of which were of major scale and significance. There have been only 292 years of peace. The 20th century alone saw two world wars in which 60 million people lost their lives. Today, with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East pushing humanity to the brink of nuclear apocalypse, peace seems like a naive utopia in an inhumane world.
For us physicians, however, peace represents the state of health of the international community. For it is only under conditions of peace that a doctor can practice their calling—that of safeguarding life on our planet.
Hippocrates, who first established medical ethics, taught us that distinctions based on race, religion, or age do not apply to the physician. A patient’s life is of supreme value, and no one has the right to choose between friends or enemies, the young or the old, the rich or the poor. In wartime, doctors have always stood on the front lines to treat soldiers torn apart on deadly battlefields or civilians being decimated by bombs, famine, or epidemics behind the lines. Organizations such as the Red Cross, Doctors of the World, Doctors Without Borders, and Doctors Against Torture rush wherever the need calls them, following in the footsteps of Hippocrates, who took the lead in treating the victims of the Plague of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.
Yet this is not enough. Just as Hippocrates demonstrated through his own example—when he intervened to avert war in Kos while composing his “EPIVOMIOS” (Speech at the Altar) a physician has a duty to forestall political decisions that lead to war. Thus, in 1980, on the initiative of two cardiologists—one American and one Soviet—the organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (of which we constitute the Greek branch) was founded; it declared, for the first time with substantiated evidence, that medicine would be powerless to aid humanity in the event of a nuclear war. For its contribution to halting the arms race, IPPNW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. And because history demonstrated that powerful nations within the UN systematically violate the law, IPPNW rallied over 700 diverse NGOs worldwide to join the fight against nuclear weapons by founding ICAN; They succeeded in getting the new anti-nuclear treaty—the TPNW—adopted by the UN and were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
We all remember the experiments that Mengele and other Nazi criminals perpetrated in both concentration camps and psychiatric hospitals, citing eugenics as their justification. Today, in the era of cloning, the same argument is employed by scientists who believe that science should not be bound by ethical rules. Indeed, the practice of medicine runs counter to the interests of the human species. Major epidemics served to create—through mechanisms of natural selection—new generations of more resilient human beings.
Medicine contradicts nature by acting as a form of negative natural selection, enabling genetically disadvantaged populations not only to survive but also to reproduce and pass on their compromised genes. In this era of technological marvels, there is a tendency to suppress the ultimate truth of death; instead, we delude ourselves with promises of immortality, provided we heed the experts who pledge eternal youth. However, Hippocratic ethics acknowledges the limits of science and reminds us that “the aim of medicine is complete cure, the alleviation of the acute symptoms of diseases, and refraining from intervention in incurable cases—since it is well known that medicine cannot raise the dead.” The goal of medicine is to relieve human suffering and to ease the process of dying. In this endeavor, physicians are often called upon to play the role of God, prioritizing certain interventions and defying nature—which, indifferent to the suffering of any individual being, experiments with mechanisms of natural selection to improve the species.
Today, with medicine having become fully commercialized, experts hope to intervene in this sphere through cloning—modifying the human species and eliminating defective genes. No one can predict with certainty what lies behind these interventions, nor who will ultimately benefit. In the same time in impoverished nations, people continue to die from simple, curable ailments—such as those transmitted via contaminated water (typhoid, cholera, etc.)—while in times of war, civilians are now the first to be sacrificed with barbarity.
The practice of medicine, as shaped by Hippocrates, is a political act. Medicine was indeed used by the ruling class as a tool of dominance during the colonial era, and to this day, it serves as a lever for controlling the Third World, a region ravaged by famine and epidemics. While it is always useful to enact laws attempting to regulate the application of new knowledge, it is doubtful whether they will solve the problem.
The medical act itself is an encroachment upon God’s sovereignty, an artificial prolongation of a life condemned by nature, an amoral human intervention in the laws of existence, laws that demand the crushing of the weak for the sake of the strong. For in nature, the principles of equality and justice do not hold sway. Compassion is, fortunately, a human achievement. As is medical science. And, as with all human things, I fear we shall continue to teeter between creation and destruction for as long as humanity exists.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) was founded based on the vision of Bernard Lown (USA) and Evgeni Chazov (USSR), using the prestige of the medical profession and alerting leaders and citizens to the existential risks humanity faces due to the nuclear arms race.
Our goal is (just as we succeeded after 1985 in convincing the superpowers of that time that the arms race was not the only path to peace) to convince citizens today (and through them, their governments) that nuclear weapons are instruments of suicide rather than a means of ensuring humanity’s security, especially now that we appear to be on the brink of a Third World War.
Dr. Sotiropoulou, the president of IPPNW’s Greek affiliate, received the 2026 Nikos Nikiforidis Award for her lifelong activities in pursuit of peace and nuclear disarmament.
