Suffer the little children

This year, and for many years in the past and many years in the future, some 14 million of the world's children will die before the age of 5. A very large proportion of these deaths is preventable. Three million children die of dehydration due to diarrhea and another 3 million die of preventable infectious diseases. Others starve or die of malnutrition-related infections. At a very modest cost, oral rehydration therapy could save the lives of the first group, and relatively inexpensive vaccination against the five major diseases of childhood could save many of the rest. Diarrhea could be eliminated or greatly reduced by insuring safe water supplies throughout the world. This would require a modest investment by nations that care. Unfortunately, too few care. A small part of the money the world has budgeted for military weapons could save the majority of these doomed children as well as their brothers and sisters who grow up undernourished with underdeveloped bodies and minds. But there is money to be made in manufacturing weapons-enormous sums of money. Contractor corporations-sometimes called Merchants of Death-make huge profits as do their stockholders and managers. So millions of little children suffer and die, and other millions of little children suffer and live.