Argumentation in Good News Communication on Genetic Breast Cancer. The Experience of OPERA

This paper addresses the unexplored issue of how to communicate good news to the low-risk population, as a way reduce anxiety and limit unnecessary demand for consultation. More specifically, we illustrate the design of the low-risk assessment message delivered by OPERA, an online application that we have built for risk assessment of genetic breast cancer. OPERA’s central component is an argumentative strategy that applies the UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence’ guidelines on the basis of salient attributes of the family and personal history of breast and/or ovarian cancer. More specifically, the strategy uses an essentially deductive argument structure instantiating an appeal to expert opinion, sided by a dialectical component that has the rhetorical aim of taking into consideration and addressing users’ potential concerns.