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Is Preventive War Winnable?

George A. Diamond, MD

JAMA. 1993;269(18):2418-2419.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear bomb. Advocates of "preventive war"—including such luminaries as Bertrand Russell and John von Neumann— argued that an eventual armed confrontation with the Soviets was inevitable, and that the United States should therefore seize the opportunity to launch a pre-emptive first strike. To those who countenanced a more cautious wait-and-see attitude, von Neumann responded, "If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"¹

See also p 2379.

The medical counterpart of preventive war is currently being waged under the pseudonym "risk stratification." Risk stratification strategies are based on the tacit assumption that physicians can accurately predict the unfavorable outcome of individual patients and that they possess effective ways to mitigate that unfavorable outcome. If so, the sooner one intervenes, the better. Indeed, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Division of Cardiology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, Calif.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Division of Cardiology, 8700 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048 (Dr Diamond).

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