Letter To the President John F. Kennedy Dr. Albert Schweitzer Lambaréné, April 20, 1962 Dear President Kennedy, Would you have the great kindness to forgive me, old as I am, for taking the courage to write to you about the tests, which the United States, together with England, want to carry out when Russia does not accede to your request that an international inspection on their territory takes care that no tests will take place. I take the courage to write to you about this as someone who has occupied himself for a long time with the problem of atomic weapons and with the problem of peace. I believe that I may assure you that, with the newest scientific inventions, each test carried out by the Soviet can be detected at a distance by highly developed instruments, which your country possesses and which protect the United States. I also take the courage, as an absolutely neutral person, to admit that I am not quite convinced that the claim that one state can oblige the other to tolerate an international control commission on its territory is juridically motivated. This right can only exist after the states agree on disarmament. Then a new situation will have been established, which will put an end to the cold war and which will give each state the right to know, through international inspection on each other's territory, that each country meets its obligations to disarm according to the agreement. The same international control will see to it that no test can be carried out. An urgent necessity for the world is that the atomic powers agree as soon as possible on disarmament under effective international control. The possibility of such disarmament negotiations should not be made questionable by unnecessary appeals for international verification of the discontinuance of testing. Only when the states agree not to carry out tests any more can promising negotiations about disarmament and peace take place. Also, when this cannot be achieved, the world is in a hopeless and very dangerous state. I take the courage to draw your attention also to something that concerns you personally. The terrible discovery has been made, as you surely know, that the children of parents who were exposed to radioactive radiation, even a slight one, are normal in the first and the second generations, but from the third and the fourth generations on horrible deformities occur. The children born then are in danger of having deformed feet, hands, and organs, of being blind or of having deformed brains. These sad happenings are caused by the great sensitiveness of the cells of the reproductive organs to small doses of radioactive radiation. The effect of this radiation is hereditary and increasing. From the third and fourth generations on the children are no longer normal but deformed. People do not like to talk about these facts and prefer not to give any importance to them. But nobody can declare it nonexistent. It is possible that the tests carried out in these times give less fallout than those made before. But this smaller amount of fallout will still cause men and women of our generation to receive radiation through radioactive milk, radioactive vegetables, radioactive water, or in any other way. The smallest doses of radiation on the so sensitive cells of the reproductive organs are sufficient to cause future misery in the third and fourth generations. It depends on you, dear President, if this horrible misery of future human beings will be realized, when new atomic tests will be carried out. You are, by the position which you have in the present world, the personality who will be burdened with this responsibility. Please, do consider, if you will take this responsibility by insisting on not absolutely necessary conditions for the cessation of atomic tests or if this terrible responsibility will move you to let the time come in which tests belong to the past and in which promising negotiations about disarmament and peace are at last possible. It was not easy for me to draw your attention to the great responsibility you hold to protect future generations. Please, forgive me; I could not do otherwise, not only for the sake of humanity, but also out of consideration for you personally. Yours devotedly, Albert Schweitzer

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