If assisted suicide is legalised in the UK, people may be coerced into signing away their lives, according to doctors who treat terminally ill patients.

In a letter to The Times, experts from hospitals and universities highlighted problems in jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal.

They write: “Evidence from Oregon shows how assessment of capacity for assisted suicide is influenced by the individual values of assessing clinicians, something that is almost impossible to mitigate against.

“Patients seeking assisted suicide often have significant psychosocial distress, making them at increased risk of coercion and abuse; Oregon’s most recent official report shows that 53 per cent of patients who died under the state’s Death with Dignity Act reported feeling a burden on their families, friends or caregivers. Pain and fear of pain were less frequently cited.”

The letter continues: “In Canada emerging evidence shows that the medical assistance in dying law can worsen the quality of death, creating strain between patients and their families and impairing effective symptom control, leading to patient and provider distress.”

It concludes: “Legalising assisted suicide, without strong evidence of the effectiveness of proposed safeguards, is unwise and unsafe.”