Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) is a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

located in

Tucson , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

. The group is closely affiliated with the

American Association of Physicians and Surgeons The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a politically conservative non-profit association that promotes conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, such as HIV/AIDS denialism, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, a ...

, a

politically conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization ...

nonprofit association advocating numerous discredited hypotheses including

AIDS denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while oth ...

. It is run by Arizona physician Jane Orient. According to

Bloomberg News Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Televi ...

, the group was "founded to promote civil defense during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

", and has been "transformed over the years into a forum" on "fringe-science topics" such as

global warming denial Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change, including the extent to which it is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, or th ...

. DDP was described by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' as a "fringe political group" and as a "truly bizarre lobby group". It promotes the

denialist In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to denial, deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical expe ...

view that man-made global warming is not real or not an important concern.

Affiliations

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness share the same address with AAPS. * DDP President Jane Orient is also the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). * DDP Vice-President

Arthur B. Robinson Arthur Brouhard Robinson (born March 24, 1942) is an American biochemist, conservative activist, and politician, serving as Oregon State Senator from the 2nd District since 2021. He was the five-time Republican nominee for the United States H ...

is also the President of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM).

Petr Beckmann Award

The

Petr Beckmann Petr Beckmann (November 13, 1924 – August 3, 1993) was a professor of electrical engineering who became a well-known advocate of libertarianism and nuclear power. Later in his life he disputed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and oth ...

Award for courage and achievement in defense of scientific truth and freedom' is awarded at the annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. The award is named for

, an electrical engineer and libertarian who challenged Albert Einstein's

theory of relativity The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in ...

. The ''Guardian'' described the Beckmann Award as "handed out by obscure rightwing lobbyists". The following people have received this award: * 1995 - Jane Orient * 1996 -

Robert Jastrow Robert Jastrow (September 7, 1925 – February 8, 2008) was an American astronomer and planetary physicist. He was a NASA scientist, populist author and futurist. Education Jastrow attended Townsend Harris High School. He also attended the ...

* 1997 -

Sallie Baliunas Sallie Louise Baliunas (born February 23, 1953) is a retired astrophysicist. She formerly worked at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and was the Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1991 to 2003. Early life and ...

* 1998 -

* 2000 -

S. Fred Singer Siegfried Fred Singer (September 27, 1924 – April 6, 2020) was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecti ...

* 2003 -

Sherwood B. Idso Sherwood B. Idso (born June 12, 1942) is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of A ...

* 2004 -

Willie Soon Willie Wei-Hock Soon (born September 30, 1965) is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer who was long employed as a part-time externally funded researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Center for Astrophysics ...

* 2012 -

Marc Morano Marc Morano (born 1968) is a former Republican political aide who founded and runs the website ClimateDepot.com. ClimateDepot is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US non-profit organisation that promotes climate c ...

Especially Morano's selection was criticized in ''

'', as Morano had previously republished the email address of a climate scientist who had received death threats. Morano wrote of climate scientists: "I seriously believe we should kick them while they're down. They deserve to be publicly flogged."

Annual meetings

In August 2015 the group held its 33rd annual meeting. While attacks on mainstream climate science are "a staple", the meeting provides a forum to a "broad" range of material. Presentations at the 2015 meeting included a theory about links between John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the deaths of his

brother A brother is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to non-familia ...

and son; a prediction that the aim of

Obamacare The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and colloquially known as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Presid ...

was to cause the collapse the U.S. health-care system and a recommendation "that the audience start stockpiling medications and finding doctors who would work for cash"; a sympathetic discussion of the theory that low doses of radiation are "beneficial to human health"; and an argument that the

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

virus does not cause

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

, but instead was invented by government scientists who wanted to cover up other health risks of “the lifestyle of homosexual men.” The meeting was covered by conservative website

Breitbart ''Breitbart News Network'' (known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an American far-rightMultiple sources: * * * * * * * * * * * * syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by ...

, attended by

George Gilder George Franklin Gilder (; born November 29, 1939) is an American investor, author, economist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute. His 1981 book, '' Wealth and Poverty'', advanced a case for supply-side economics and capitalism during the ...

, and the conservative

Heartland Institute The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking. Founded in 1984, it worked wit ...

sent its science director to present his plan to abolish the

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

Political views

Doctors for Disaster Preparedness President Jane Orient has asserted that the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) a ...

reports are unreliable and that relevant data was "hidden, locked in the clutches of the elite few" because the data would "decisively disproves their computer models and shows that their draconian emission controls are based on nothing except a lust for power, control and profit." After a reported increase in fallout-shelter construction since the

September 11, 2001, attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

on the United States, she was quoted as saying, "They're treating me less like a crazy woman than they did before."

Funding

Computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

and

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...

manager

Robert Mercer Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946) is an American hedge fund manager, computer scientist, and political donor. Mercer was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer and is the former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissan ...

has been a donor to DDP.

References

{{authority control Medical associations based in the United States Medical and health organizations based in Arizona Conservative organizations in the United States Organizations based in Tucson, Arizona Disaster medicine Climate change denial