MARCH 3, 2026
Dear Friends,
We are greatly alarmed that the U.S., aided by Israel, has launched a needless war on Iran that has quickly spread throughout the Mideast region unleashing severe global repercussions, including the heightened threat of escalation to a nuclear catastrophe.
As physicians and health professionals, we need to speak out fervently against this dire threat to our democracy and collective health and survival.
We join our voices with those throughout our PSR network, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and many others in condemning this illegal war and in calling for an immediate ceasefire and a return to negotiations. As IPPNW and PSR National remind us, “there is no military solution to the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation anywhere in the world.”
Recent armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and in many other regions graphically illustrate that war is not an abstraction. War has grievous health consequences, not only due to the deaths and wounds from bombs and guns, but also as a consequence of disrupted health systems, displacement, food insecurity, and mental health crises. The reliance on fossil fuels to conduct war and the environmental destruction of war accelerates the existential threat of our climate emergency.
The war positions us on the knife-edge of a Nuclear Armageddon for which there can be no meaningful medical or public health response.
ACTION
We must immediately raise our voices in opposition to unchecked executive war-making, and reaffirm that our Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president.
As a critical first step in strengthening our constitutional rights and stopping this war and the ever-looming threat of nuclear “mutually-assured destruction,” I urge you to:
- Call your Senators and Representative. Ask them to invoke their constitutional authority under the War Powers Act.
- Demand an immediate ceasefire and a return to negotiations.
- Insist that Congress hold this administration accountable for unauthorized and dangerous military escalation.
- Reaffirm support for diplomatic frameworks and for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The Congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121.
History teaches us that organized, persistent, principled non-violent actions and movements can bend events toward sanity and justice.
PSR was founded by physicians who refused to accept nuclear annihilation as inevitable. We and our IPPNW comrades shared the Nobel Peace Prize because we insisted that prevention — not retaliation — is the only effective response to nuclear risk.
We do not give up.
We organize.
We educate.
We call Congress.
We speak clearly about health consequences.
And we insist that democracy — not unilateral force and unbridled militarism— guide decisions of war and peace.
Thank you for standing with us.
In Peace and Solidarity,
Bob Gould, MD
President, San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility
