In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care.

Martin Buber suggested that evil prevailed because of the inability of man to imagine the real. Yet human beings do have that capacity. Lord Byron, a poet favored by Alfred Nobel, captured the stark essence of a post-nuclear world in his poem Darkness.

As long as we rationalize nuclear weapons as "necessary" in order to save American lives, then nuclear weapons will never be gotten rid of.

Some of life's biggest and most positive changes are propelled by mini conspiracies of a few well-meaning folks.

We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others; the right to survival.

In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care.

I see nuclear weapons as the ultimate evil, not just evil, but the ultimate evil with the potential to make life unlivable on this planet.