Format: 8.5″x11″ pages, 1″ margins, Times New Roman font, double spaced lines, indented the first line of each paragraph. Substantial errors in spelling or grammar will result in a reduction of grade. Student name and page number may be placed in a header within the margins, but this is not required. Professor name, course name, date, etc. need not be included.

Content: In approximately 2000 words, craft a policy argument. It should be well-researched as evidenced by appropriate citations (in an academically appropriate format of your choosing; ideally Blue Book but since most of you will not know this format and I will not be teaching it to you, any style will do). This may be successfully accomplished in a variety of ways, but the paradigmatic approach would be to:

• Spend about one third of the paper discussing the status quo on an issue pertaining to bioethics.
• Spend about one third of the paper criticizing the status quo.
• Spend the final third of the paper offering your own solution.

The easiest “status quo” is probably the law–so for example you might argue that something now legal should be illegal, or that something now illegal should be legal. But you can also make an argument about hospital policies, or research practices, or anything else pertinent to bioethics. Anywhere social and institutional rule-making intersects with medical research or practice, you can make a policy argument.

Your response will also be checked against an anti-plagiarism database, so be sure to attribute any sources you quote (I prefer this be done in footnotes, but if you prefer to add a bibliography, include that separately from your 2000 word wordcount.)

Your paper will be graded across five areas:

• Do you make a clear policy argument? (0-20 points)
• Does your argument rely on moral claims that are clearly referenced and correctly connected with relevant existing philosophical literature? (0-20 points)
• Does your argument rely on credible empirical sources, while also accounting for (NOT OMITTING) possible counterevidence? (0-20 points)
• Does your argument successfully integrate your moral and empirical claims in a cohesive way, demonstrating insight and a breadth of topically-relevant understanding? (0-20 points)
• Is your paper grammatically correct, proofread, formatted as instructed, and otherwise linguistically coherent? (0-20 points)

Answer preview

Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are among the most controversial topics in the field of bioethics (Synder & Sulmacy, 2007). Human life is very sacred, and as such, taking it away gets abhorred by almost every person. The attachment people have with human life mostly stems from religious doctrines and cultural practices…

 

(2100 words)