Michael Buerk, chairman, Moral Maze

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, we took a more lateral look at the measures to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic by asking whether this reflected a cultural refusal to face the inevitability of death. Have we paid disproportionate attention to preventing deaths from Covid-19 to the detriment of others? Have we been, on the other hand, too dismissive of the threat to life from the virus on the basis that the majority of those who have died are very elderly? More generally, do medical doctors and people in general focus too much on prolonging life at all costs rather than upon living and dying well? Does the handling of the Covid crisis tell us that death is the last great taboo?

My co-panellists were Mona Siddiqui, Andrew Doyle and Ash Sarkar. Our witnesses were Rev Dr Brendan McCarthy, adviser on medical ethics to the Church of England; Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology and director of self-harm research at Nottingham university; Dr Kathryn Mannix, consultant in palliative care; and Professor Michael Hauskeller, head of the department of philosophy at Liverpool university.

You can listen to the programme on BBC iPlayer here.

Recent posts

Premium subscribers can read my latest exclusive post, on Nigel Farage’s decision to channel his Brexit party into Covid-contrarianism, by clicking here.

And you can read my previous post that’s available to everyone, on how Sir Keir Starmer’s problems with the Labour party he now leads go far deeper than its antisemitism, if you click here.

One more thing…

This is how my website works.

It has two subscription levels: my free service and the premium service.

Anyone can sign up to the free service on this website. You can of course unsubscribe at any time by clicking “unsubscribe” at the foot of each email.

Everyone on the free list will receive the full text of pieces I write for outlets such as the Jewish News Syndicate and the Jewish Chronicle, as well as other posts and links to my broadcasting work.

But why not subscribe to my premium service? For that you’ll also receive pieces that I write specially for my premium subscribers. Those articles will not be published elsewhere. They’ll arrive in your inbox as soon as I have written them.

There is a monthly fee of $6.99 for the premium service, or $70 for an annual subscription. Although the fee is charged in US dollars, you can sign up with any credit card. Just click on the “subscribe now” button below to see the available options for subscribing either to the premium or the free service.

A note on subscriptions

If you purchase a subscription to my site, you will be authorising a payment to my company Dirah Associates. In the past, that is the name that may have appeared on your credit card statement. In future, though, the charge should appear instead as Melanie Phillips.

And thank you for following my work.