UPDATE: Eluana Englaro died on Monday Feb. 9.

What’s been called “Italy’s Terry Schiavo case” is starting to resemble its U.S. precedent in more ways than one. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ordered doctors on Friday not to disconnect the feeding tubes that the country’s top appeals court had ruled could be removed. Doctors had began withdrawing them on Friday before the order came from Rome.

Eluana Englaro, 38, has been in a vegetative state since a car crash in 1992. Her  case has looked much like that of Schiavo, the American who spent 15 years in a vegetative state and was allowed to die in 2005 after a long court battle.

(Photo:Eluana Englaro in an undated family photo)

“Until we have a law about end-of-life issues, nutrition and hydration, because they are a form of vital life sustenance, cannot be suspended under any circumstances by those who are care-givers of people who are not self-sufficient,” Berlusconi said after making the case resemble the Schiavo drama even more by intervening to stop Englaro’s tubes from being removed. In the Schiavo case, President George Bush also stepped in at a late stage to try to block a court decision to disconnect her.

The cabinet acted in defiance of Italy’s President Giorgio Napolitano, who was opposed to dealing with the issue through a decree and has the power to block it. But Berlusconi said that if that happened he would call an emergency session of parliament, where he has a comfortable majority, to enact a law.

Catholic politicians, mostly in the centre right, have said that not feeding Englaro amounts to euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy, and had urged the government to intervene.

As in the Schiavo case, the Milan court that ruled on Englaro back in November said it was convinced that her condition was irreversible and that she would prefer to die rather than be kept alive artificially. Do you think those criteria are enough to allow doctors to remove the nutrition and hydration tubes?

(Photo: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 20 Dec 2008/Remo Casilli)

Italy’s “Terry Schiavo case” has ended with the country’s top appeals court allowing a father to disconnect the feeding tube that has kept his comatose daughter alive for 16 years. Eluana Englaro, now 37, has been in a vegetative state at a hospital in northern Italy since a 1992 car crash. The Englaro case has been compared to that of American Terri Schiavo, who spent 15 years in a vegetative state before a long and very public dispute ended in 2005 with a court decision allowing her husband to have her feeding tube disconnected.

As in the Schiavo case, the Milan court that ruled on the case said it was convinced Englaro would prefer to die rather than be kept alive artificially. State prosecutors appealed that decision to the Cassation Court, the highest appeals court in Italy, and it was the Cassation Court’s decision on Nov. 13 that definitively settled the case.

(Photo:Eluana Englaro in an undated family photo)

This was the first time such a ruling has been made and upheld in Italy, where the influential Roman Catholic Church is implacably opposed to ending feeding and hydrating of patients in a vegetative state. Vatican Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan called the decision a “monstrous and inhuman murder” .

When the Schiavo and Englaro cases began, the lines in this ethical dilemma were fairly clearly drawn. On one side were those who said a persistent vegetative state (PVS) was enough to declare a patient effectively dead and disconnect feeding tubes. On the other were those, like the cardinal above, who said that patient was still alive. In 2006, brain scans revealed that a woman in PVS after suffering devastating brain damage in a car crash could imagine playing tennis or walking around her home when doctors asked her to do this.

Do those brain scans prove that PVS patients are still effectively alive? Should courts take that into account?

P.S. According to David Waters at the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, a similar case is going on now in Washington where a hospital wants to stop treatment for a PVS boy but his Orthodox Jewish parents reject their standard of brain death as proof of death and want to wait until his heart stops.

Here’s a video from July when the Milan court ruled tht Englaro’s feeding tubes could be removed: