This experiment doesn't make a lot of sense to me, if they're really trying to understand what surgery will be like in weightlessness:

Whizzing above southwest France aboard a specially modified Airbus, strapped-down surgeons will attempt to remove a fatty tumor from the forearm of a volunteer in a three-hour operation.

The Airbus A300 Zero-G, based in Bordeaux, is designed to perform roller coaster-like maneuvers that simulate weightlessness. It will make about 30 such parabolas during the flight.

The problem is that you only get about twenty-five seconds of weightlessness at a time. In between, you get two or more gees as you do the pullup maneuver going in and the pullout on the way down. So in addition to probably making the surgeons nauseous, they'll have to deal with tools being pulled down in the high gees (and any fluids will also be pooled, rather than continuously floating). I really don't think that it will usefully replicate the problems of surgery in a continuous weightless environment (and it really is a problem). This is the kind of research that has to be performed on ISS, or some other orbital facility.

I also found this a little strange:

The patient, Philippe Sanchot, and the six-person medical team underwent training in zero-gravity machines, much like those astronauts use, to prepare for the operation.

What "zero-gravity machines" are they talking about? I'd like to get one.

While this does sound like it's not been fully thought out, I've always wondered how any long-term mission could be undertaken away from the quick escape available from Earth orbit without first learning how to do emergency medicine (and dentistry) while in free fall.

(The PETA screams when the first test animals get sliced and diced in orbit should be pretty loud and entertaining, too.)