What price tag can you attach to a human life?

How about $10 million?

Does $440 sound like just compensation for someone's life?

That's what the owners of the Sago, W.Va., mining company paid for a violation that led to the death of a Kentucky miner last year, according to a Jan. 19 Philadelphia Inquirer article.

It's frightening to think that the same government that ought to protect its citizens has allowed mining regulations to atrophy to the point of uselessness, to the point of two mining tragedies in a month.

Fourteen miners have died in West Virginia, which was enough to incite Pennsylvania lawmakers to think about updating legislation on the books, not modified since 1961.

A bill, which promises to bring "broad revision," to Pennsylvania's nearly 500 surface and underground mines, is currently before a state Senate committee.

It's sad a fact of government bureaucracy that tragedy is often the impetus of much-needed legislative change. But as long as the economy continues to depend so heavily upon the coal the miners produce and as long as they are required to work hundreds of feet underground day in and day out, then the government ought to be required make safe their working conditions.

Given the recent misfortunes in West Virginia, it is now clear that viable solutions include more efficient means of communicating with miners when they are deep underground and better-prepared response teams to quickly attend to situations when they happen.

In a rather unfortunate circumstance, the glare of the media's attention should spur governments, both state and national, to act quickly.

It's a sad day for us when a person's life costs about the same as what the average college student pays for textbooks.