In defense of the hypothetical “Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies” (and because I can’t help but nitpick)...
The European Commission on Public Health gives the following definition of “rare disease”:
Rare diseases, including those of genetic origin, are life-threatening or chronically debilitating diseases which are of such low prevalence that special combined efforts are needed to address them. As a guide, low prevalence is taken as prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 in the Community.
What are the odds that a person living in the U.K. will be diagnosed with a rare disease during his or her lifetime? As it turns out, it’s one in seventeen. Getting a “rare disease” is not a rare event.
So, assuming that the prevalence of rare diseases in dogs is similar to that of people, the problem that Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies is trying to address is fairly wide in scope. How cost-effective they are is still an open question, though. For all I know, it might be, on average, much easier to invent a cure for any given incurable rare disease than any given incurable common one, because any common disease that would be easy to cure would already have a cure.
Of course, they’re still saving dogs instead of people...
… and of course it’s possible that by studying a rare disease they figure out more about how diseases work in general, thus contributing to to a cure for… diseased in general.
Indeed, a study for a rare pet disease is less likely to be distorted by immediate profit motive (since there isn’t any), and could contribute more—and positively instead of perhaps negatively—to the understanding of disease in general.
In defense of the hypothetical “Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies” (and because I can’t help but nitpick)...
The European Commission on Public Health gives the following definition of “rare disease”:
What are the odds that a person living in the U.K. will be diagnosed with a rare disease during his or her lifetime? As it turns out, it’s one in seventeen. Getting a “rare disease” is not a rare event.
So, assuming that the prevalence of rare diseases in dogs is similar to that of people, the problem that Society for Curing Rare Diseases in Cute Puppies is trying to address is fairly wide in scope. How cost-effective they are is still an open question, though. For all I know, it might be, on average, much easier to invent a cure for any given incurable rare disease than any given incurable common one, because any common disease that would be easy to cure would already have a cure.
Of course, they’re still saving dogs instead of people...
… and of course it’s possible that by studying a rare disease they figure out more about how diseases work in general, thus contributing to to a cure for… diseased in general.
Indeed, a study for a rare pet disease is less likely to be distorted by immediate profit motive (since there isn’t any), and could contribute more—and positively instead of perhaps negatively—to the understanding of disease in general.