Belgian surgeon and activist who was Secretary General of the
World Medical Association. He was born in Uccle, Brussels, on
Dec 8, 1923, and died after a motor vehicle accident on June 10,
2007, aged 83 years. As an advocate of physicians, of medical
ethics, and of justice, André Wynen did not flinch. When General
Augusto Pinochet of Chile unjustly jailed physicians who were
council members of the Chilean Medical Association, Wynen
decided to fly to Chile, in 1986, to demand their release. The
crime of the physicians? They had disobeyed Pinochet's decree
that suspected opposition members should not receive medical
treatment. Wynen travelled alone to Chile and helped secure
their release. Wynen's first major fight was against another
dictator, Adolph Hitler. That fight began in 1940, when Nazi
Germany invaded France and the Benelux countries. At an age when
most future physicians would be finishing secondary school
before starting university studies, 17-year-old Wynen joined the
resistance movement, eventually