Case Study Report

Review this case study: You have been with your life partner for 40 years and they are now within months of dying from a long-term illness. Each day you see them suffering from pain and the degradation of feeling helpless, having been active and strong all their life. Your life partner has been on anti-depressant medication and has twice attempted to take their own life, using this medication. You know that they wish to die with dignity, but they are not now in a position to take their own life. It is both hard to watch their suffering and very stressful and demanding on you. You realise that you could end their life by suffocating them while they sleep. Now you have to make a decision about what you will do.

You will analyse this case study from two ethical frameworks studied and discuss how each position offers a way of understanding the issue and of responding to it. In your introduction briefly identify which case study you are using. Introduce the two frameworks you are using to analyse the case study and briefly describe them. In the body of your paper you will be required to apply them to the case study. This means critically analysing how aspects of the case study might be understood from the two different theoretical frameworks you have chosen. Your conclusion should address the implications of these two positions for the case study, the people involved and the broader community.

Frameworks/theories include: Consequentialism (ethical egoism, act and rule utilitarianism), Non-consequentialism (intuitionism, divine command theory, and Kant’s duty ethics), Virtue ethics (Nicomacean ethics and Confucian ethics).

Sources must be academic (i.e. journal articles.) Please use in text referencing.