All the Good People
Rare Disease Day: We’re Joined Together by This Common Thread
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Watch my Rare Disease Day song on video!
Tomorrow, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will mark the seventh annual Rare Disease Day. As part of that gathering, I’d like to share this amateur video. What you’ll hear is an adaptation of a song I once heard sung at a folk festival, but I’ve changed the words. I’m now dedicating this to all of the good people whose lives have been touched by rare diseases.
While the spur-of-the-moment camerawork leaves something to be desired, I love the spirit of this video. It was shot at a gathering of the Moebius Syndrome Foundation in Philadelphia in July 2012. Moebius syndrome is a rare neurological condition, present from birth, that primarily affects the muscles controlling facial expression and eye movement. However, if you watch the video all the way to the end, or read the lyrics at the bottom of this post, I think you’ll find that this song strikes a chord for all such rare conditions.
In the United States, rare diseases are defined as conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people. That doesn’t sound like a lot. However, when you consider that more than 6,500 conditions fall into this category, rare diseases are a challenge collectively faced by as many as 25 million Americans.
