 In 1980, Lown called on a small number of doctors to organize against the mounting nuclear threat that followed USSR's invasion of Afghanistan and the election of the Reagan administration.This small group of physicians, with the help largely of first year Harvard medical students, formed the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).This IPPNW could not have been founded without the intimate friendship between Eugene Chazov and Lown.