Putting women and newborns to the HIV test: a case study of a public policy "topos"
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J. Blake Scott [1]
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[1] University of Florida
University of Florida
Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 66, nº 2, 2000, págs. 101-119
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This essay analyzes public health policy and biomedical arguments about mandatory prenatal and newborn HIV testing, focusing on the role of a special topos—the “scales topos”—in conceptually and rhetorically shaping the arguments of the debate. The essay argues that two overlapping versions of this dominant frame—one from public policy discourse and the other from legal/bioethical discourse—work together to support a web of reductive arguments that distorts issues surrounding testing and prematurely pushes the terms of the debate past careful deliberation to implementation. As a case study, this essay demonstrates how special topoi can function as restricting frames that oversimplify issues, block crucial lines of argument, and therefore help produce a range of harmful effects.
