Sanctity of the human genome as foundation of life
Main Article Content
Abstract
In times before ethics and laws were formalised, it was commonly held that human life is sacred since it is divinely ordained and because of this divine intervention human life must be protected by implication due to it being holy. As a result, people often assume that this meant that human life is completely inviolable. This view of life is more prominent in western religious philosophies and had been raised in many legal debates about human life such as abortion and euthanasia. To ensure survival and peaceful coexistence the uniqueness of human life was emphasized so that people would respect the worth of human life. This respect entailed values such as equality and autonomy and incorporated both reciprocal rights and obligations to one another. History, in the form of wars and pandemics, has proven that when legal systems ignore these basic human rights, it will lead to tyranny and anarchy. The atrocities committed during the Second World War prompted nation states to collect the values of human life into a single concept termed ‘human dignity’. This term was then adopted as a new form of legal humanism deriving its basis from the concept of sanctity of human life. The recognition of this concept enables an entire set of human rights and obligations to find practical application on a universal basis setting apart from the diverse religious and other philosophical views on human life.
Keywords:
human genome, human dignity, human rights, sanctity of human life, sanctity of human genome
Article Details
How to Cite
BOTES, Marietjie.
Sanctity of the human genome as foundation of life.
Medical Research Archives, [S.l.], v. 8, n. 9, sep. 2020.
ISSN 2375-1924.
Available at: <https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/2220>. Date accessed: 21 dec. 2024.
doi: https://doi.org/10.18103/mra.v8i9.2220.
Section
Articles
The Medical Research Archives grants authors the right to publish and reproduce the unrevised contribution in whole or in part at any time and in any form for any scholarly non-commercial purpose with the condition that all publications of the contribution include a full citation to the journal as published by the Medical Research Archives.
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15. Abiogenesis is the study of how biological life arose from inorganic matter through natural processes and the method by which life arose on this earth. Most amino acids called building blocks of life can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life.
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32. Kindler v. Canada (Minister of Justice) [1991] 2 SCR 779 Case number: 21321.