Castle Bravo nuclear test image courtesy of the US Department of Energy
The Marshall Islands presented written arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its case against the world’s nuclear powers. The Marshall Islands argued that the nine nuclear powers have flouted their legal obligation to disarm under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and under customary international law. The Marshall Islands was the site of 67 US nuclear tests, including the 15-megaton “Castle Bravo” test. Article VI of the NPT requires signatories
to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
The ICJ ruled in 1996 that signatories had an obligation “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion” nuclear disarmament negotiations. “All the nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenals instead of negotiating, and we we want the court to rule on this,” Phon van den Biesen, the leader of the Marshall Islands’ legal team, said.
Delegations representing 158 states attended a conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna. According to a report prepared by host country Austria, participants largely agreed that as long as nuclear weapons exist there is a chance that they will be detonated either intentionally or accidentally, and that the detonation of a nuclear weapon could have global, catastrophic consequences. In a statement released at the conference, the Vatican said that nuclear weapons are a problem that all countries share. “Now more than ever,” the statement said, “the facts of technological and political interdependence cry out for an ethic of solidarity in which we work with one another for a less dangerous, morally responsible future.”
Senior US state and defense department officials told Congress that Russia has violated both the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Brian McKeon suggested that the US would consider deploying prohibited ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe if Russia did not come back into compliance with the treaty. Russia has claimed in the past that US drones and ship-launched missiles undermine the treaty. Russia could reportedly consider withdrawing from the INF in any case since neighboring powers China, Pakistan, and Israel are not bound by the treaty. The deployment of intermediate-range missiles would likely increase the risk of accidental nuclear war between the US and Russia by reducing the time each country would have to determine how to respond to apparent threats. “We believe that the INF treaty contributes to not only US and Russian security, but also to that of our allies and partners,” McKeon told Congress. “For that reason, Russian development or deployment of a weapons system in violation of the treaty will not be ignored.”
The Russian ruble fell dramatically, putting political and economic pressure on Russian President Putin’s government. Standard & Poor’s warned that it might have to downgrade Russia’s credit rating to below investment grade, a move that could potentially cost Russia $20-30 billion. The Russian economy has been hurt by falling oil prices and Western sanctions related to the conflict in Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliament meanwhile voted overwhelmingly to work toward joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russia has repeatedly made it clear that it would not be comfortable with the neighboring country and former Soviet Republic joining the western alliance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the vote “only pumps up confrontation, and creates the illusion that by passing such laws it is possible to settle a deep domestic crisis within Ukraine”.
A group of Catholic bishops used the occasion of the Lima Climate Change Conference to call on the world’s governments to “put an end to the fossil fuel era.” The bishops called on countries to adopt a fair and binding climate change agreement at the summit in Paris in June, as well as to work toward new models of sustainable development. Humankind has a duty to treat Creation respectfully, the statement read. “We Catholic bishops recognize the atmosphere, rain forests, oceans, and agricultural land as [a] common good that requires our care.”
In a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers reported that the case fatality rate of Ebola in Sierra Leone has fallen to around 30% even in the absence of new medications. The recorded case fatality rate in Sierra Leone was nearly 75% in May and June of 2014. The Economist reported that at the same time public health campaigns are helping to limit the spread of the disease:
After watching neighbours perish, hand-washing with diluted bleach is now common in the region, as are signs saying ABC: Avoid Body Contact. Instead of shaking hands many greet each other by touching covered forearms or legs. In churches many congregants sit a few inches apart to avoid contact. Public buildings have temperature checks at the entrance.
“It is inspiring to see how much better the response has become in the past two months,” US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Tom Frieden said in a statement on his return from a visit to the affected countries. “But it is sobering that Ebola continues to spread rapidly in Sierra Leone and that in parts of Monrovia and Conakry Ebola is spreading unabated.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for emergency use a Roche test designed to diagnose Ebola in just over three hours. Médecins Sans Frontières is conducting accelerated clinical trials of antiviral drugs and blood therapy at several sites in West Africa. And the first African trial of a vaccine against the Ebola and Marburg viruses triggered a modest immune response in recipients. The trial, which began in 2009 in Uganda, found that nearly 60% of volunteers who received the vaccine had an antibody response to Ebola Zaire, the strain behind the outbreak in West Africa. The antibody response lasted less than a year, however. Trials of a more potent version of the vaccine are underway in the US, the UK, and Africa.
A CDC lab technician was exposed to the Ebola virus when material from an experiment containing the live virus was wrongly moved to a less secure laboratory. Earlier in the year, a large number of CDC workers were potentially exposed to anthrax after samples that had not been properly inactivated were distributed. The Guardian reported that there have been more than 100 similar accidents or near-misses at biosafety labs in the UK over the past five years:
Many of the incidents were one-off, almost inevitable human mistakes, such as spillages of infectious bugs. Others were down to old equipment and safety clothing. The most serious accidents arose from chains of mistakes that happened one after the other, and were often discovered only later.
According to The Guardian, one laboratory mistakenly sent out 3,700 live samples of dangerous organisms over a two-year period. Richard Ebright, a biosafety expert at Rutgers, said that some of the incidents were “potentially very serious” and suggested there is a “deep problem”.
This news summary was put together in collaboration with Anthropocene. Thanks to Tony Barrett, Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, and Grant Wilson for help compiling the news.
For last month’s news summary, please see GCR News Summary November 2014.
You can help us compile future news posts by putting any GCR news you see in the comment thread of this blog post, or send it via email to Grant Wilson (grant [at] gcrinstitute.org).
