The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself.

Two modes of givenness of pre-reflective self-consciousness. Philosophical Explorations, Vol. 23, Issue. 1, p. 15. Immanuel Kant s Critique of Pure Reason (1781 ... and the arguments for those ...