Even if the term bioethics is used all over the world, its meanings are multiple and different, especially between American and European countries, depending on local cultural and medical contexts. These differences concern the issues discussed or the institutional form bioethics takes. In France, bioethics was used from the end of the 1970s and focused on research ethics and issues at the beginning of life. At the national level, a permanent commission, the “national consultative ethics committee on life sciences and health” (Comité Consultatif National d'Ethique, CCNE) was created by President François Mitterrand in 1983. Its recommendations dealt essentially with procreative medicine and biomedical research ethics.