INTRODUCTION

The great watershed in the development and practice of medical ethics in modern France was World War Ⅱ. Prior to the war there was neither a legal nor informal régime of ethics that was uniformly enforced or voluntarily followed. Substantial disagreement existed about the nature of doctors’ obligations to one another, their patients, and to the state. All this changed during the Vichy regime that ruled France between 1940 and 1944. On October 7, 1940, in line with the corporatist ideals of the regime, a government-controlled Ordre des Médecins was founded with authority over licensing, discipline, and many of the details of medical education and practice. The new Ordre was retained following the defeat of the Germans, but was allowed more autonomy, including the legal enforcement of a written code of professional ethics, adopted by statute in 1947. For the first time in the history of French medicine, all doctors had a legal obligation to follow a standard body of ethical doctrine. It took a bit longer, as we shall see, for ethical principles themselves to change, but it was a momentous development in the practical moral orientation of French medicine.

Between the reorganization of French medicine during the French Revolutionary era and the brief reign of Marshall Petain, French doctors did not have a reliable body of ethical guidance.