# "Smile Train" ads: since when is a cleft palate fatal?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 18, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705 "2010-06-18T20:01:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/1 "2010-06-18T20:01:06Z")
Anyone else keep getting these below-the-first-post ads for “Smile Train” featuring a picture of a sad looking kid with a cleft palate and text that reads, “A click of a mouse can save his life”?
I understand it’s a sympathy thing to get you to donate money, or they’re using the phrase “save his life” in a less than literal sense, but the clear inference is that the child’s cleft palate, not his crushing poverty, is going to kill him.
This seem a bit disingenuous to anyone else?
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### Author:  [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/2 "2010-06-18T20:12:14Z")
I don’t know. Is it possible that they can’t suckle the mother’s milk in infancy, and in very poor places they don’t have the resources to give the child nutrients any other way?
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### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/3 "2010-06-18T20:14:49Z")
Suppose that’s possible, but clearly a lot of these kids are well past breastfeeding age. Their website doesn’t provide many details.
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### Author:  [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/4 "2010-06-18T20:27:54Z")
I’m not sure how it works in humans, but cleft palate puppies/kittens will often die if you don’t run a tube down into their stomachs to feed them. Many of them, as pointed out, have trouble suckling and can starve to death. But even if they can suckle adequately, they’re at hugely increased risk for aspirating the milk and setting up a fatal pneumonia. It seems to me a human would have roughly the same mechanics and thus be prone to the same issues.
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### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/5 "2010-06-18T20:45:46Z")
When I read that, I thought they meant “save his life” because his social opportunities will be so tremendously affected by such a horrible disfigurement, that plastic surgery can make an incredible difference. Taking the case of John Merrick (the Elephant Man) as an example.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/6 "2010-06-18T21:33:14Z")
In developing countries, the childhood mortality rate for kids with cleft palates is much higher than their peers without cleft palates, due usually to failure to thrive as infants due to poor nutrition, increased infection rates in infancy and early childhood due to milk and all other foods frequently ending up in the nasopharynx and even sinuses, and there are reports of greater acts of violence and abuse towards them both by their caregivers and their peers.
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### Author:  [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)
#### Post date: [June 18, 2010, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smile-train-ads-since-when-is-a-cleft-palate-fatal/543705/7 "2010-06-18T22:05:32Z")
And then it leads to [learning disabilities and stunted growth.](http://www.fborfw.com/strip_fix/archives/002539.php)