Right-to-die campaign launches today

Healthcare Professionals for Change (HPC), a group of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals, aims to challenge the views of bodies such as the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) which oppose such a move.

It is the first professional body to be set up with the explicit aim of changing the 1961 Suicide Act.

Dr Ann McPherson, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, said many doctors believed that patients "should not have to suffer against their wishes at the end of life".

The group's founder went on: "By taking a hostile approach to a change in the law on assisted dying, medical bodies such as the BMA and the Royal College of Physicians are failing to adequately reflect the views of all their members.

"Alongside access to good-quality end-of-life care, we believe that terminally-ill, mentally-competent patients should be able to choose an assisted death, subject to safeguards."

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which backs the group, said: "It's important for doctors to be able to challenge the views of the BMA and other medical bodies. They need to be able to represent a wider viewpoint."

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has moved from opposing assisted suicide to a neutral position, and the HPC aims to encourage other Royal Colleges and the BMA to follow suit.

But Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA's head of sciences and ethics, said: "Assisted dying is illegal in the UK so doctors are not permitted to help terminally-ill competent adults to die."

It was a "complex and emotive issue", she said, but a motion to support assisted suicide has never been passed by a BMA members' annual meeting.