Die reg op lewe, die waarde van menslike lewe en die eutanasie-vraagstuk
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Euthanasia is a highly emotional and controversial subject - especially since almost everyone can identify with the ones who are most likely to ask for such assistance (namely the terminally ill and the elderly). But is it morally acceptable to give such persons the to be killed or to receive assistance in taking their own lives? This article attempts to address this question and to formulate a principled perspective, which could be used as a moral framework to address the euthanasia issue. It is submitted that the principled perspective to the value of life is best described by the sanctity-of life school of thought, which states that each human life is intrinsically valuable and should be protected irrespective of the individual's age or any disease or physical or mental disability that the individual might suffer from. However, this does not mean that the value of human life is an absolute value - if there are other values and considerations that are more important in a particular situation then those values and considerations should prevail. It is often submitted that individuals' to self determination (embraced by s 10, 12 and 15 of our constitution) encompasses the so-called right to choose. This argument, however, loses sight of the fact that individuals do not have a to choose whatever they want - a to self determination is only worthy of protection if that choice is morally acceptable and can contribute to the promotion of respect for human dignity and the intrinsic value of human life. This article also attempts to distinguish between the different instances of euthanasia and assisted suicide and indicates the South African legal position with regard to each instance - active euthanasia and assisted suicide are essentially acts of murder. The article further investigates the legal position on euthanasia in Canada, England, Oregon and the Netherlands. Finally the article examines whether active euthanasia, passive euthanasia and assisted suicide are reasonable and justifiable in terms of section 36 of the constitution if the principled perspective to the value of human life is accepted - and it is found that only passive euthanasia can be justified in terms of the constitution. In conclusion it is submitted that the current legal position should be confirmed and that more time and resources should be spent on the improvement and promotion of palliative care and emotional support for the terminally ill.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.014 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".