Reuters reports (emphasis mine):

The government committee, which acts as a reference point for lawmakers, voted in favor of the stance late last month, but the position paper is still being finalized.

"To feed an unconscious patient through a tube is not a medical act," said the committee's president, Francesco D'Agostino, in reported comments confirmed by his office.

"It's like giving a bottle to a newborn baby who can't be nursed by its mother ... And then we reflect on the Schiavo case. The woman was left to die of starvation."

Doctors say Schiavo was not in a coma but in a persistent vegetative state, a different medical condition. Many exams showed her brain was barely functioning. An autopsy after her death showed she could never have recovered consciousness.

But the Schiavo case was closely followed in Italy, where the Roman Catholic Church demanded doctors keep feeding her, despite the wishes of her husband.

Pope John Paul II died two days after Schiavo, and the
Vatican had compared the U.S. state court to an "executioner" for ordering her feeding tube removed.

Salvatore will probably never be the same as he was before the accident, and his mother spoke about his poor speech. But his family says he seems to be alert and aware.

"My brother speaks and remembers. I don't expect that he will be like he was, but it's already a miracle," Pietro said was quoted as saying in Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"And to think that some doctors said that it was all useless and that he would be dead in three, four months."