Old controversies die hard. The October 6 presentation of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to two French researchers should have been the end of a 30-year debate over who should get credit for discovering the AIDS virus. A dispute between American researcher Robert Gallo and French researchers Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier entered a long truce in 1987 when President Jacques Chirac declared the two teams to be co-discoverers. The 2008 Nobel prize committee, however, awarded this year’s prize to Sinoussi and Montagnier, cutting Gallo out entirely. The French should be happy, non?

They’re not, according to an article in this week's Le Nouvel Observateur. The Nobel Committee decided to split the medicine prize between the French scientists and a German researcher, Harald zur Hausen, who discovered the Human Papilloma Virus. Why, the magazine asks, do each of the French winners—who discovered a disease affecting 1 percent of the world’s population—only receive 25 percent of the prize while zur Hausen gets 50 percent for research concerning a more minor virus?

That's only the tip of the iceberg of France's disillusionment with medicine. Last week Le Nouvel Observateur reported that the French are pessimistic about the future of their healthcare system (despite what they tell Michael Moore). An astounding 74 percent of French citizens think that their country’s healthcare system has been getting worse in recent years, largely due to social security problems and cutbacks in reimbursement and hospital personnel. That's a 9 percent jump from last year’s poll. Perhaps they have reason to be worried. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s administration has proposed shaking up the system by centralizing the hospital system, increasing the state's role in managing its citizens' healthcare. This move is criticized by local officials, private practice doctors, hospital practitioners, and Medef, France’s largest union.

Despite their unhappiness, the French public doesn’t seem ready to take action. In Le Nouvel Observateur’s recent poll , only 48 percent of respondents are prepared to pay for medications themselves for “small health problems” in order to preserve the national healthcare system. At the same time, fewer respondents say they’re taking measures to prevent illness, such as eating healthfully, exercising regularly. Not only do the French lack confidence in their supposedly world-class system, but they also are failing to take care of themselves. At least they have a Nobel prize. Or half of one.