The WMA Secretariat remained in New York City until 1974 when for reasons of economy, and in order to operate within the vicinity of Geneva-based international organizations (WHO, ILO, ICN, ISSA, etc.)

This prompted the Council to appoint another Study Committee to prepare an International Code of Medical Ethics, which after an extensive discussion, was adopted in 1949 by the III General Assembly.

[4] The WMA has the following classes of membership: During the World Medical Association General Assembly in Reykjavík in early October 2018, members of the Canadian Medical Association stated that parts of the speech by WMA's incoming president Leonid Eidelman had been plagiarized from a speech made in 2014 by Chris Simpson (cardiologist) who was then the president of CMA.

"Multiple other parts of the speech were also copied from various websites, blogs and news articles, without proper appropriate attribution to the authors", she latter added in a statement.

[6] On 6 October, the CMA resigned; their press release stated that the decision was made because WMA was not upholding ethical standards.

[7] In an email to The Canadian Press, WMA spokesman Nigel Duncan said that Eidelman's speech had been written by others and that he did not know that it might contain plagiarism.