Good evening. Lockdown starts tonight. Our liberties are being suspended. Many of our livelihoods

likely wrecked, much of what we enjoy banned, even human contacts strictly regulated in what

seems in a secular society the sacred cause of saving lives. The Prime Minister described the

prospect of a sharp rise in the coronavirus death toll as a medical and moral disaster,

to be avoided, it seems, at all costs.

What do the pandemic, and our response to it,

tell us about our changing attitude to death?

What would previous generations,

who lived with an almost everyday experience of mortality

by religions that saw their time on earth as a preparation for

and death as the gateway to an everlasting afterlife make of it, a disease that mostly kills

those sick already, at an average age well over twice what humans have been able to expect

for most of their history. We certainly seem to value human life more. Science has made us healthier for longer

and holds out the possibility life might be prolonged indefinitely. Is all that a good thing? Or do we

care too much about longevity and too little about meaning? Is it really healthy to regard death,

for the time being at least, the only certainty in life as a failure either individual or institutional.

Living and dying well, the morality of mortality in our moral maze tonight.

Our panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times.

Ash Sarka, editor at Navarra, the left-wing media group.

Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Edinburgh University,

and the comedian Andrew Doyle. Melanie Fis, where do you stand on this?

Well, I think that our culture does have a problem with denying the reality of death.

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