CHOICES
Millions of children with cleft palates in developing countries are deprived of any help because of the cost of the operation to rectify this deformity. The surgery takes only 45-minutes and can cost around £150 per child. This operation can change a child's life, of course, and allow them to gain in self-confidence and be accepted in society.
Below is a picture of a glove. Not any glove, but the glove of a dead, singer who allegedly had young boys sleeping in his bed at night. The glove was bought for $35o,000, a remarkable sum that could have brought happiness to so many children had the money been used for a charity called THE SMILE TRAIN which supports the free treatment of poor children with clefts and other problems.
There's not a lot more that can be said about this, other than that the advert for THE SMILE TRAIN lay poignantly on one half of the opened pages in The Independent, facing the news about the glove and the obscene price paid on the other half. And the question remains, how can the transitory happiness brought about by a glove be measured against the lifelong happiness of a child?
