Jonathan Bellamy caught up with Dr Peter Saunders of Care Not Killing about the Sir Terry Pratchett lecture, the Panorama Poll and some of the dangers associated with assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Jonathan: It's a very strong picture of where this could go in the future. Of course you mentioned the holocaust there and of course the Nazi kind of vision of an Arian society that was removing people who were perceived to be inferior or perhaps a drain on the society, that kind of thing and of course it wasn't just then. In the mid twentieth century there was the eugenics campaign which was doing a similar thing. It was trying to minimise the amount of children that may be born to "weaker members of society".

Dr Saunders: Yes.

Jonathan: What do you think then about where we are in terms of consciousness in the nation if we're beginning to think like that? Are older people a drain on society? What's behind that kind of thinking?

Dr Saunders: Well I think it ultimately has a spiritual root. I think we're a society which has increasingly turned our back on God and that means that for a start we don't regard every human being as infinitely precious. We no longer believe in the absolute, thou shalt not kill, which was meant to keep us safe. We no longer believe there's life after death or any judgement. We're increasingly intoxicated by contemporary idols, of which materialism and the whole celebrity culture are two of the most toxic. I think we've become a nation, if you like, in Ezekiel's words that lives and prospers and ignores the poor and needy. That we're arrogant overfed and unconcerned. I think it's quite a good description of our society at the moment. The danger is that we're then open to this sort of thing.

You've got to be very careful of course with any Nazi allusion; but what many people aren't aware of is that what ended in places like Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka in the 1940s had far more subtle beginnings in the 1920s and '30s. In fact the parallels are quite chilling, because it was back in the 1920s that two people, a juror and a psychiatrist wrote a book in which they coined the term 'life and worthy of life'. They said that the time would come when such people would be mercifully despatched. Then it was in the late '30s that they showed the film called I Accuse, in which a doctor gives a lethal injection to his wife with her consent because she has multiple sclerosis and no longer wants to live. Then in the next room there's another colleague playing soft piano music. So that voluntary euthanasia became acceptable first of all; then it began in 1939 - '41 with the killing of disabled children. Six thousand disabled children and then following that the killing of sixty thousand people in geriatric and psychiatric institutions; of which the most famous was Hadamar. Then it was in the mid 1940s, about '43, the same medical staff were later deployed, to what we now know as the death camps. So it was a very gradual thing. I'm sure you've heard of Malcolm Muggeridge's analogy, where he says, if you take a frog and put it in hot water it will jump out, but if you take a frog and put it in cold water and then gradually bring that water to the boil, then the frog will make no attempt to escape until it's boiled alive. I think human beings are not unlike frogs in the sense that if the moral temperature of a country changes gradually enough, people just don't notice. I think that's the real dangerous situation that we're in now in Britain. We have in effect turned our back on God and Christian values, where we've embraced all these twentieth century idols and where it's actually far more important to us to invest our money in things that we can't afford and go into debt to buy, than actually investing in care for the marginal, the poor, the elderly; those with dementia and so on and so forth, which is where we should be investing our money.

Jonathan: On a scale of 0 - 100 degrees C, how hot would you say the water is on this issue?

Dr Saunders: Well - it's a difficult question. I think we're really at a critical time in our nation and I think that if the guidance produced by the Director of Public Prosecutions, which we're due to see his definitive guidance in the next two weeks or so; if that doesn't change, then there will be huge pressure for a change in the law and we'll see another bill after the election. We've already got one in Scotland that's going through at the moment for Margo McDonald and being debated over the next few months. We've got to remember that we have a very carefully orchestrated well funded campaign here, with the backing of major media outlets, including the BBC I'm afraid and also media personalities and celebrities. It's gaining momentum. Those things could happen very quickly if we don't do something. So I think it's very important for Christians to pray, to get informed; to be writing to their MPs. To be talking to colleagues and friends and telling them about how serious the situation is. We need to wake up.

Jonathan: Dr Peter Saunders, thank you very much. Just quickly, tell us a little bit about your website. If people want to find out more about this issue, what can they find on your website?

Dr Saunders: Well if they go to www.carenotkilling.org.uk they'll find lots of articles and links to issues in this whole area.