Ethics of Personal Health Choices
Purpose:
In this assignment you will be examining your own opinions related to personal choices made about a specific health behavior. The goal of this project is for you to not only express and defend your opinion about a provide health behavior statement but to explore the viewpoint you used to make that choice, why you hold that view, and the effects of your view on the world in general. During this assignment you are tasked with supporting or not supporting the given statement below, reading/watching the required materials, and creating an essay style paper meeting the requirements.
Statement – Use the exact statement as written at the top of the Ethics in Health and Wellness folder in Bb.
Required Materials – You are required to read/watch all sources in Bb fully!
Instructions:
- Decide your stance, are you in support or not of the statement as it stands? You must pick a side and be prepared to defend it. This was part of the second set up step.
- Assemble your defense for your side. The supplementary materials were vetted and are high quality sources that contain outside links to other high-quality sources. There are many ways to defend both sides of this argument, but make sure you are not committing logical fallacies in your argument. You can learn more about common logical fallacies here: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/. Keep in mind it is up to YOU to provide the evidence for your claims. You may include any external research you would like BUT make sure you are using high quality sources. It may help to go back to the library research badges as a refresher of this topic. This was part of the second set up step.
- Paper formatting guidelines:
- 3 pages max of written content – this only includes your written content, not the reference page, cover page, etc.
- Please remember the policies outlined in this course’s syllabus about grading
- Do not simply copy and paste your work from the set up steps. You need to craft a well thought out paper that incorporates all the required components. It is strongly recommended that you have the CWI writing center read your final draft and provide feedback – You can make an appointment with them here.
- Formatting – Times New Roman, Size 12, Double Spaced, 1” margins
- Style – Argumentative essay style paper, see here (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html) for more information on this style
- Citations – You are required to cite ALL sources used, even the required materials, in proper APA citation format. This means you need to cite both in text where the source is used and at the end with a full references list. For more information please go here (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html)
- 3 pages max of written content – this only includes your written content, not the reference page, cover page, etc.
- Paper components – You must include all of the following components in your final paper:
- A brief review of the provided sources. This should be no more then 1/2 page in length. Your job is to show you read and understand what was presented. This was part of the first set up step.
- Your stance on the statement – You must either support or not support the statement as it stands. Support means complete support for the statement as written. This was part of the second set up step.
- Explanation of stance – Provide a detailed explanation of why you support/not support the statement. You are expected to make your case as to why your stance is the correct one. This is a great area to bring in appropriate sources. For example, a claim that mandating face masks is in violation of personal rights would need to be backed up by court precedent on the topic (yes, there is precedent on personal rights vs public health, specifically from the US Supreme Court). Make sure to not fall into any logical fallacies while making your argument! This was part of the second and third set up steps.
- Viewpoint used –
- Identify which ethical viewpoint you used in your argument from the ones we use in the ethics module of this course.
- Explain why you used this viewpoint to determine what the right action was in this instance. Why was this viewpoint useful to you?
- What are the problems with your viewpoint? Every viewpoint has issues related to it. If you look in the Ethics Module you will find the position problems.
- This was part of the second set up step.
- Personal background – You need to dig deeper as to what caused you to use the viewpoint you used. Therefore in this section you will:
- Explore several (3 or more) factors from your personal life that you believe influenced your use of viewpoint on this topic.
- Explain, briefly how each factor influenced your use of this ethical viewpoint
- This was part of the third set up step.
- World effects – If we were to take your stance on this topic and apply it to the entire world, what do you think would happen? Why do you think this would happen? Again, this is a great place to use appropriate sources. This was part of the third set up step.