Medical Law and Rhetorical Modes of its Presentation in an Institutional Discourse: An Issue Statement

Abstract

As a result of rhetoric studies development in a specific medicine and healthcare field of interaction, scholars determined the grounds based on which rhetoric of law and medicine is singled out as a subfield of rhetoric. While medicine rhetoric is more focused on the rhetoric of science, the rhetoric analysis of substantive areas of medical law and healthcare prove that application of medicine rhetoric methodology to the areas of medical law results in dehumanization of the subjects of medical law; state healthcare policy implementation is perceived by affected communities as marketization of a national healthcare system; changes in medical law doctrines result in ethical shifts. The authors conclude that development of technologies in general and medical technologies in particular, public access to medical investigations’ results and inception of bioethics have resulted in the situation when the subjects of medical law are required to develop new approaches to communication with the audiences (or affected communities) based on rhetorical concepts.