Edited by Gérard Mémeteau and Lucien Israël, Paris, Bassano, 1999, 192 pages, 132 FF.

What is bioethics? For those involved in the study or the teaching of bioethics this question is a fundamental one. This book proposes a series of possible answers to this question, converging on the idea that bioethics is a myth.

As a whole, the book is a response to the so-called French “bioethical” laws (1994) and to the “bioethics” they propagate. It is therefore, for the French-reading English-speaker, a good introduction to these and to the debates around them.

Gérard Mémeteau, professor of law and director of the newly established Centre de Droit Médical at the University of Poitiers, documents in his article on the one hand the inconsistencies of the French legal approach, and on the other his own regret at being forced to admit these inconsistencies. Reluctantly, he concludes that the traditional concept of the human being, subject of positive law, is, despite the affirmation of “respect for the human being from the beginning of its life”, …