What exactly happens when you "save a life" anyway? They get enough food and medicine to stave off death temporarily so they can continue their productive life of being eaten by flies and lying in dirt roads surrounded by the rotting corpses of dead dogs only to die of AIDS anyway a week later? Is this what my dollar is buying me? If so, I'll pass.

This issue assumes that death is a bad thing. Usually that is a safe assumption, but I think you have to take quality of life into account. It's like not saving your 23 year old, blind, three legged cat after you accidentally run over him with a lawnmower. Sure it's medically possible, but what's the point?

I agree with the other posters who say that saving starving african children is pointless until their system changes to one that has a chance of stopping this endless cycle of poverty.