The controversial issue of Physician-Assisted Suicide

Physician-Assisted Suicide

To satisfy this assignment, you may make a causal argument, an evaluation argument, a proposal argument, or a combination of arguments, as long as you enter a “conversation” about an issue in dispute, integrating your thoughts with those of experts you encounter via library research.  You are to advance your point of view in light of scholarly thinking on the matter.  You will need to identify a fruitful, issue-based question and to use your analysis of  at least six scholarly sources to develop your argument.  In order to responsibly enter this larger conversation about the issue you have chosen, you will need to represent the ideas of others clearly and fairly in advancing your own position, as well as analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different ideas (including your own).  Here are two key questions: What do you bring to the table? and What will your argument teach those interested in the issue?  As you can see, this is not simply a review of what others have said.  I ask for a researched argument rather than a research paper.

As you approach this assignment, look at problems existing in your local community (issues related to schooling or immigration perhaps) or the college community (the marginalization of gays and lesbians, for instance).    Limit your focus to what you can adequately handle in 6 pages.  Above all, write about something that matters.

Here are your instructions for the researched argument:

• identify a controversial issue
• create and sustain an argument that combines your thinking with that of scholars
• include both analysis and exposition of information
• establish what is at stake in accepting the views of authors (including yourself)
• provide good reasons and relevant evidence to support your point of view
• identify, analyze, and address potential counterarguments
• Paper must be written in 3rd person only
• Paper must conform to APA or MLA standards.