Paper's abstract

Florence Quinche, Virtual consultation of citizens: predictive medicine. How a technical device acts upon the form of the arguments
During the 2009 Convention on Bioethics, French citizens were had the opportunity to give their opinion on a Internet site dedicated to this event. The organizers offered various themes. We chose to analyze the contri-bu-tions about predictive medicine because it is one of the subjects that were the least dealt with during these conventions (along with neurosciences issues). The messages of the net users are examined on three aspects: content, argumentative form and “depth” of argumentation. The recurring types of arguments were picked out and described following S. Toulmin, Ch. Perelman and Ph. Breton’s theories. It appears that the communicational medium used, i. e., the web site, by the fact that it addresses some kind of « uni-versal audience » and the relative anony-mity of the contri-bu-tions, modifies the usual strength of the arguments; in particular the most formal and decontextualized. The most sophistic arguments have also been brought out, in particular the argument of predictive medicine being likened to eugenics.


Key Words : bioethics – Internet - citizen convention – predictive medicine – argumentation - sophism
t. 53, 2010 : p. 294-309

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