The Prime Minister has warned against legalising assisted suicide, saying it would run the risk of putting vulnerable people under pressure to end their lives.
Gordon Brown's comments come as Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, prepares to publish full guidance on Thursday on when prosecutions for assisted suicide should be brought.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister said: "Let us be clear: death as an option and an entitlement, via whatever bureaucratic processes a change in the law on assisted suicide might devise, would fundamentally change the way we think about death.
"The risk of pressures - however subtle - on the frail and the vulnerable, who may for example feel their existence is burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded."
Mr Brown said Mr Starmer QC should be free to clarify the legal guidelines on assisted suicide but Parliament should not alter the law.
He wrote in the newspaper: "I believe that because of the clarification of the public interest factors now being discussed, and because of some important developments in care over recent decades, the case for a change in the law is now weaker.
"I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society... to use the laws we have well, rather than change them."
However 'right-to-die' campaigner Debbie Purdy criticised Gordon Brown, arguing the PM had shown a "lack of respect" to the British people.
She said she believes changing the law will allow more open discussion, meaning patients will not feel abandoned and lives will actually be saved.
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She said: "To have a Prime Minister who says actually I don't care if 95% of the population think we should find a law and discuss whether it's possible or not... I think it shows a lack of respect for the British people. If the Dutch and the Americans can handle a law, why doesn't he think the British people are capable of the same thing? Does he have that little respect for us?"
