A pro-euthanasia party in Premier Romano Prodi's government said on Thursday it was ready to help a terminally ill man end his life.
The man, Piergiorgio Welby, suffers from advanced muscular dystrophy and has appealed to the Italian parliament to legalise mercy killing so that he can "die in dignity".
"While we are here talking, Piergiorgio Welby is asking us to end his suffering. We are ready to disobey the law and pull the plug for him," said the Radicals, one of nine parties in the centre-left government.
"It would be a political gesture recognising Welby's right to commit suicide," it said, adding: "No doctor in Italy is brave enough to do it".
In a letter to parliament earlier this week, 51-year-old Welby said Italian lawmakers had left him no choice but to carry out an act of "civil disobedience" with the help of the Radical party and its former leader Marco Pannella.
"Despite my public request that I be sedated and my respirator switched off, nobody wants to take this responsibility. Therefore, the only path open to me is that of civil disobedience," he said.
Welby said that he and the Radical party, which has always been at the forefront of civil liberty battles in Italy, had yet to decide when to carry out the assisted suicide.
In September, Welby revived the euthanasia debate in Catholic Italy by appealing to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano for help.
Welby argued that Italians should have the same access to euthanasia as "the Swiss, Belgians and the Dutch".
Napolitano subsequently called for a parliamentary debate on the issue, triggering heated protests from the Vatican and causing a predictable split among lawmakers, many of whom are Catholics and follow the Church's teaching that life should end at the moment of natural death.
Some lawmakers are now working on a draft law which would legalise "biological wills" but would stop short of permitting euthanasia.
In the wills, a person would dictate patient treatment preferences in the event of an incapacitating illness, allowing him or her to reject excessive life-prolonging treatments.
The Vatican has expressed cautious approval of the idea providing euthanasia is excluded.
Radical heavyweight Pannella sought to accelerate the debate last month by saying that he was personally willing to help Welby commit suicide.
"It would be an act of respect for life and civilised principles which are currently denied by the Vatican," said Pannella, who spearheaded the fight for divorce and abortion in Italy.
Surveys suggest that Italian public opinion is more open to the idea of euthanasia than the country's parliament.
Recent polls show that 58% of Italians support mercy killing, which is currently legal in only Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US state of Oregon.
Welby, who was diagnosed with his disease when he was a teenager, is no longer able to move. He breathes through a respirator, communicates via a voice synthesiser and receives nourishment through a feeding tube.
Despite his condition, Welby has managed to write a book about his fight to die entitled Lasciatemi Morire (Let Me Die).
Published earlier this week, the 140-page book stressed that "medical science is now able to keep alive those who in the past would have died. It is the medical world that has created this problem and it up to the medical world to find a solution".
"These days, we live in fear of surviving beyond the limits of our personal dignity, will and capacity to bear physical and mental suffering," he said.
In his letter to Napolitano, Welby said: "When a terminally ill person decides to give up those he loves, his friends and life itself, and asks to be able to end a cruelly biological survival, I believe that will should be respected".
