The legislation would add safeguards to a practice used at Crandall Canyon that is known as retreat mining, in which the pillars supporting an area of the mine are removed or reduced to extract as much coal as possible.
An assisted dying law would not radically alter medical culture; it would instead provide much-needed safeguards to a practice that is already happening, unregulated and behind closed doors.
A scathing Justice Department report last week accused Ferguson of using local police and courts to generate revenue instead of safeguarding citizens, a practice the investigators said fell heaviest on African-Americans.
In a letter published in the Guardian the 29 authors – 27 doctors and two nurses – claim the proposed legalisation will help ensure safeguards are in place for a practice that is already happening "behind closed doors" and would let patients choose when they die.
Writing in the era of the landmark 1947 Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education, which put the issue of indirect state support for parochial schools in the national spotlight, Parsons and Murray used the "first freedom" to enlist history as a safeguard to Catholic practice in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation.
In countries where legalising physician-assisted death is being contemplated, the development of such a consultation provision could also be considered in order to safeguard the practice of euthanasia (as it can provide safeguards to adequate performance of euthanasia and assisted suicide).
He therefore tried to impress the Southern party leadership with his respect for the constitutional safeguards for the practice.
But policymakers need to recognize the obvious and apply greater safeguards to the practice.
We employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorised collection or use".
Safeguarding best practice needs independent monitors with statutory powers, whom patients and relatives can approach in every locality, as with community health councils, which, sadly, were abolished in the interests of efficiency savings.
