L’itinéraire d’un chirurgien nord-vietnamien : Entre révolution nationale et science internationale

• Main Authors: Michitake Aso, Annick Guénel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Provence 2014-12-01
• Series: Moussons
• Subjects: Tôn Thất Tùng; liver surgery; Agent Orange; Vietnam; Cold War; public health
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/moussons/3098

Educated in French schools, the Vietnamese surgeon Tôn Thất Tùng joined the Viet Minh at the beginning of the First Indochina War, putting his skills at the service of the resistance. After 1954, he helped to rebuild the healthcare system of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In return for his services, the DRV offered him the chance to resume his earlier experiments with liver surgery began under colonization. The development of a novel surgical technique allowed his work to appear in international journals. Thanks to the scientific networks that resulted from these publications, he could send students abroad to be trained. This network of correspondents also enabled him to undertake a new struggle against the spraying of dioxin over Vietnam during the Second Indochina War. Our article underlines the tight connections between science and politics in Tùng’s life and career, all the while showing that these form part of a global history of medicine.