War Is Not Good For You

By Conn Hallinan, November 12, 2010

Back in the 1960s, peace activists sported a bumper sticker that read: “War is not good for children and other living creatures.” In a way, that sums up Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel’s War and Public Health, where 46 experts on everything from epidemiology to international law weigh in on the authors’ central premise: “War and militarism have catastrophic effects on human health and well being.”

Levy and Sidel, both former presidents of the American Public Health Association, and distinguished researchers and practitioners in their fields, make the point that wars ultimately always come home. Young women and men are the most obvious casualties, shattered in body and mind on the battlefield. But war’s devastation includes the terrible things wrought by organized violence on the populations and infrastructures where wars are fought.

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