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Given that the issues related to biomedical practices and biotechnologies are significant, the traditional deontological and professional standards have become insufficient, and the demand for law has accelerated. On the domestic front France has given herself a legal arsenal making it possible to answer this request, even if in parallel she has institutionalised an authority for ‘producing’ ethics, the ‘National Consultative Committee for Ethics’. Despite the increasing need for a similar move at the international level, intervention by the nation states remains limited, and regulation is organised around para-legal standards elaborated by essentially non-governmental authorities (non-governmental international organisations and international ethics committees). If the complementarity of these legal and para-legal standards is a major asset, the inevitable competition between these rules due to the authority of international law over any national law, must lead to the states becoming aware of the essential role which they must play in drafting any international text (s).