Prescription for Survival is the story of how committed individuals who are not in positions of political power can use their personal resources (professional expertise, personal and professional connections, networking skills, etc.) to bring about major change in the world.

Bernard Lown is a practicing physician who is a world pioneer in cardiac research and treatment. In 1981, brimming with anxiety about the nuclear confrontation with the Russians, together with a Soviet cardiologist colleague (Evgeni Chazov), he launched a joint USA-USSR medical antinuclear movement: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Over the next four years Lown and Chazov recruited more than 150,000 doctors worldwide as part of this organisation and movement, held many international conferences, met with numerous world leaders, appeared on television programs broadcast throughout the USSR and the US and contributed to slowing down the nuclear arms race. In 1985 Lown and Chazov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of IPPNW.

There is a lot of adventure, intrigue and conflict that plays out in this story as Lown tells it, vividly and with incredible candor.

In addition to being a memoir by a Nobel Prize winner, this book offers a new understanding of what was really going on in the cold war, along the lines of John Perkins’ analysis in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Lown explicitly reveals how “much of the cold war was driven not by an ideological hassle between capitalism and communism, but rather by who will continue to control the wealth of the developing world.”

On another, perhaps most profound, level, this book is an exposé of the sources, causes and consequences of militarism, which Lown identifies as a disease. Nuclear proliferation is just one symptom. It is still an active and highly contagious disease, as witnessed by events in Iran, Iraq, North Korea and all too many other places today. The most effective way to treat and cure militarism is for people outside the system to bring to bear their own unique perspectives, knowledge, expertise, connections and passions in this battle. The successful crusade of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is a great example of changing the system from outside.