[fritzwar]

A fairly influential, and fairly widely discussed book in the world of academic philosophy takes up this issue in reasonable detail. I've used the book in a variety of courses. The book is from Oxford Univ Press and the title is *Living High and Letting Die*. The author is Peter Unger from NYU and he defends the view that even modestly well off people have very strong obligations to the worlds neediest. In contemporary times, Princeton and Australian philosopher Peter Singer revived this issue in a widely reprinted and discussed article "Famine Affluence and Morality". Singer has revisited the discussion in more recent work (eg, his book ONE WORLD). Singer and Unger are on the same side on this one.

Based on fairly recent discussions by those knowledgeable about the finances of life saving aid, David, your low sounding estimates of the cost of saving a life via donation to efficient organizations like OXFAM are actually pretty close to dead on.