I'd never heard of "orphan drugs" until today.

[Swede]

This morning they had a story of a girl cured of a rare cancer. Cured. But the pharmaceutical company stopped making the drug because that type of cancer is rare. The pharmaceutical industry stops making drugs if less than 200,000 patients need a drug.

[proud patriot]

1. Have you seen the movie Laszlo's Oil ?

I swear nick nolte should have won an award for that
movie ..Susan Sarrandon is in it as well .

The movie touched on this ...

[MisterP]

4. Lorenzo's Oil

[proud patriot]

8. Yep That's it

it's been a long time since I have seen it .

[Vektor]

2. Link?

Interesting story, I'd like to hear more about it.

[Swede]

5. It was on CNN so I don't have one.

The anchor named Costello said her brother died of the same kind of cancer.

[Vektor]

6. Ok - thanks for the heads up.

I'll do a little googling.

[whistle]

3. Really all about profits not about national health

[SheilaT]

7. The term has actually been around

for a number of years. But it's not that commonly used, so it's easy to have missed.

I don't know if this is a national health care kind of issue (I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment intelligently here) but it certainly is a how-we-care-for-each-other kind of issue.

There are all sorts of very rare diseases, that only a handful of people have at any given time. Sometimes the issue is one of the fact that so very few people have it, it's difficult to do meaningful research.

But fewer than 200,000 can still mean 190,000 plus people need the drug. Where should the line be drawn? Where's the compassion?