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Labour has been asked to apologise after sending leaflets to thousands of women warning them Tory polices on cancer could endanger their lives.Cards saying the Tories would scrap a Labour guarantee for suspected breast cancer patients to see a specialist within two weeks, were sent to 250,000.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said he was "shocked" by this and Labour was trying to "scare" people.
Labour said it would never specifically target anyone with a medical condition.
The leaflets were part of a range of campaign literature dispatched over the past month on issues such as health, crime and education, a party spokesman said.
The personalised mail-shots contained a message from a breast cancer survivor praising Labour's policy - which guarantees that women thought to have signs of breast cancer can see a specialist within two weeks of being referred by a GP.
'Shameful'
Labour has claimed a range of guarantees on cancer diagnosis and treatment introduced in recent years would be threatened by a Conservative election victory.
The Tories have pledged to increase spending on health in real terms, saying the NHS is their number one priority, but argue some existing targets are counter-productive and should be axed.
Mr Lansley said he was dismayed by the leaflets and called on his opposite number, Health Secretary Andy Burnham, to write to every woman who had received a leaflet to "apologise and withdraw these claims".
"It is shameful that the Labour Party have decided to deliberately scare and misrepresent what we have said," he said.
"I am actually rather shocked that they are trying to target breast cancer patients and alarm them by making up stories about that the Conservative Party would do."
Lib Dem leader Vince Cable said there needed to be an investigation to see if there had been any "abuse" of data protection laws.
He told the BBC it was perfectly valid for parties to argue with each other over how to improve cancer screening and access to drugs.
'Untrue'
But he said it would be "rather disreputable" if cancer sufferers had been knowingly targeted with party political material.
Labour said any suggestion it had done this was "categorically untrue".
"The Labour Party would never specifically target any material at people suffering from a medical condition," a spokesman said.
"Over the past months, Labour has sent out literature on a range of issues including the cancer guarantee.
"Obviously we would never mean to cause offence to anyone, especially to anyone suffering from cancer. It is because we want to give the best treatment and to support those affected by cancer that we introduced the cancer guarantee."
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