Euthanasia was back in the media spotlight here on Friday as a small fraction of Italian doctors in a new poll said they had carried out the illegal practice.
Public support for the right to die has recently surged in this Catholic country since an intense debate surrounding the fight to die of a terminally ill writer, Piergiorgio Welby, who was refused permission to come off life-support machines but eventually found a doctor to pull the plug.
The doctor still faces prosecution in the case.
The new survey was conducted by the Italian Federation of Surgeons and Dentists (FNOMCEO) and unveiled at a national conference on The Ethics of the End of Life.
Some 15,000 national health service and private doctors were polled as the Welby debate was raging, in the first few months of the year.
Less than a fifth, 2,600, replied to the 50 bioethics queries even though they were assured their responses would be confidential.
Of these, 0.7% admitted to having carried out euthanasia or otherwise helped someone to die.
FNOMCEO President Amedeo Bianchi admitted that the rate of response was low compared to that seen in similar polls in other countries.
He hazarded that this might have been because such questions were "professionally new" for Italy.
Bianchi also highlighted that 72% of respondents stressed that their religious or philosophical views were "important or very important" factors in their working lives.
PARLIAMENT DEBATES 'LIVING WILLS'.
The survey was presented as the Italian parliament began sifting through eight conflicting bills aimed at legalizing 'living wills' that allow people to reject excessive life-prolonging treatments before they become ill.
With most Italian lawmakers highly sensitive to Vatican positions, any eventual law is expected to erect a hedge of 'pro-life' cavils around the new testaments.
Despite this political timidity, polls this year show that almost two thirds of Italians are in favour of granting terminally ill patients the right to end their suffering in certain circumstances.
Less than a quarter are opposed to the practice no matter what the circumstances.
As for euthanasia, a recent poll of doctors found 55% in favour and 45% against.
Amid the general public, support for the practice has more than doubled to almost 60%.
More than a quarter of those questioned, 26.3%, thought euthanasia was already being secretly carried out by doctors in Italian hospitals, even though only 6% said they personally knew of any such incidence.
Welby, who suffered from advanced muscular dystrophy, died days before Christmas after an anaesthetist gave him sedatives and unplugged a respirator that had kept him alive for many years.
A Rome court had ruled that he theoretically had the right to refuse his life-sustaining medical therapy but this right could not be exercised because there was no legislation explicitly enshrining it in Italian law.
There is extensive debate about the line between this sort of action and euthanasia with some arguing that there is no difference.
Although euthanasia is a highly sensitive subject in most countries, the issue is particularly charged in Italy owing to the Church's outright rejection of it.
At the time, the Vatican said it might be ethically acceptable for doctors to end Welby's treatment if it was merely prolonging his "final agony".
But the Italian Church has since said it is against any form of living will, saying in effect that a person cannot decide in one stage of his life what will be right at another stage.
Euthanasia, which is punishable with a ten-year sentence in Italy, is currently only permitted in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US state of Oregon.
