LETTER: People will die without America’s foreign aid

A recent study by Brooke Nichols, a Boston University associate professor of global public health, determined that an adult life would be lost every three minutes and a child’s life every 31 minutes due to dismantling USAID.

Additionally, if Congress passes the big beautiful bill it is considering, an estimated 29,000 American lives would be lost in the first year due to the loss of health care.

But people in the 120 countries that USAID serves, hundreds of thousands of them, really don’t affect our lives, so why does it matter? We are saving some money right?

We might wonder that, if someone lives in poverty, what contribution could they possibly make to the world. Joseph Addison, a 16th century English essayist, stated that “the philosopher, the wise man or the great man often lies concealed, but given the proper opportunity, he might be brought to light.”

As I am reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Addison’s words hit home. Lincoln grew up in a Kentucky log cabin with a dirt floor. His parents were uneducated, providing no intellectual motivation and, in fact, frowned on anything but work. Being dirt poor, he was lent out as a day laborer and viewed himself as a slave.

But he was blessed with determination and curiosity and along the way was encouraged from time to time to read. He was provided with meager opportunity but educated himself.

Fortunately for you and me, his greatness was brought to light.

It seems to me that, by the United States depriving opportunity, the world is diminishing its chances of benefiting from the “wise or the great man” by a factor of hundreds of thousands. Do you think the president thinks about that?