Sentence Correction

A recent study has found that within the past few years, many doctors had elected early retirement rather than face the threats of lawsuits and the rising costs of malpractice insurance.
(A) had elected early retirement rather than face
(B) had elected early retirement instead of facing
(C) have elected retiring early instead of facing
(D) have elected to retire early rather than facing
(E) have elected to retire early rather than face

-> OA is E

I am confused between C and E.

In my view C seems to be correct. It follows the parallelism "Retiring" and "Facing". Is it wrong because of usage of Instead of? Can someone please explain?

The concept is like that the survey has been already completed. so we cant use ing form.

Great question, GMATJeet - I know and love this sentence and I like the way you phrased your question.

In addition to jainnikhil's concerns with C, I'd add this, as well...

"retiring" is parallel to "facing" if they're both used as gerunds (-ing forms of a verb used as a noun...don't worry about the term "gerund" as long as you see that both could be used as nouns in that form). But since "facing" is a verb, how do we know, in C, that it's not supposed to be parallel to "have elected", another verb opposite the decision point if "instead of"? That's at least a potential point of confusing - and with the infinitive "to retire" after "elected" in E, there's no such confusion...the infinitive sets that clause away from "have elected".

So in C, you the X instead of Y construction could be:

they have elected X instead of facing Y
or
they have elected X instead of Y

Whereas in E, that "to retire" makes it perfectly parallel to "(to) face".

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Partially because of that potential confusion, it's not all that likely that you'll see two consecutive verbs like that in a row in a correct answer. If one answer choice says something like:

They have chosen swimming...

there's probably a better answer choice like:

They have chosen to swim...

That infinitive form is cleaner and less potentially-confusing, so if you're down between two answer choices and don't see a meaning difference or anything else, lean toward the infinitive or at least check the -ing option to see if you could potentially find some confusion there...

Hi Brian, thanks.I understand 2nd part of explanation that it is better to use infinitives but I cannot understand the rest. (may be m too dumb).cud u pls explain again.

Good Explanation Brian.
Like gmatjeet, I too went for C.