Quitting the Nuclear Labs – a Scientist’s Plea for World Peace

15th November 2014

 

By Andreas Toupadakis, Ph.D.

 

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

 

Immoral Science: the World Behind the Security Fence

 

This article describes the events of my professional life, in particular my work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dow Corning, and the University of Crete. It explains why it was necessary for me to resign from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and how scientists unintentionally get drawn into working with nuclear weapons. It directs a beam of light on the world behind the security fence – a world that the scientists who join these labs are not told about when they are hired.

 

Personal Responsibility

 

July 21, 1999 was a landmark date in my life. It was the day that my very first article was published in a newspaper, the Rethymniotika NEA, in the town of my birth, Rethymno, Crete. The title of the article was “Communication for Social Change.”

 

Looking back, it seems almost unbelievable to me that I had such fear of speaking my mind because of the place where I was working. I went through a great struggle within my soul until I broke loose from my mental prison. I could not wait any longer. I had to speak my mind in order to keep my mind. That first act of publicizing my thoughts even in a general form was a catalyst for accelerating my decision to resign from the nuclear labs five months later.

 

There are some scientists as well as people from other professions that have stood up to various forms of abusive or violent authority saying no more of this. It is unfortunate that most of the cases involve people who do so after they retire. Very few speak up before retirement. There is no possibility of seeing a better world for ourselves and our children unless we take personal responsibility for what we are doing at our workplace. It is great that some people take a stand after they retire. Most do not. But unless a great number of people take a stand against wrong while still working, even at personal risk, we will not see any change for the better. This is a call for personal responsibility.

 

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