Selling Certainty: Genetic Complexity and Moral Urgency in Myriad Genetics' BRAC<i>Analysis</i>Campaign

Rhetoric Society Quarterly Mar 2012

Selling Certainty: Genetic Complexity and Moral Urgency in Myriad Genetics' BRAC<i>Analysis</i>Campaign

Zoltan P. Majdik North Dakota State University ; Carrie Anne Platt North Dakota State University

Abstract

This essay analyzes Myriad Genetics’ marketing of the BRACAnalysis genetic test to argue that the campaign creates a unique and problematic understanding of choice and decision making in the domain of applied genetic biotechnologies. The essay identifies how the campaign creates a subject position that invites audiences into a double bind of action and moral obligation, where specific decisions to make powerful medical choices become circumscribed as a necessity. A reduction and oversimplification of technical, scientific complexity replaces deliberative processes and phronetic understandings of complex situations and exigencies with intuition and feeling as warrants for action; in turn, a resultant appearance of empowerment becomes dialectically invested in an invocation of moral urgency and necessity.

Journal: Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Published: 2012-03-01
DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2012.659790
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers

Citation Context

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