Rare diseases, orphan drugs, and orphan diseases

Abstract

Rare comes from the Latin rarus (loosely spaced or sparse) and eventually from the putative Indo-European root ERE, denoting separation, as in hermits and eremites and the net-like structures rete, retinaculum, and retina. Orphan comes from the Greek orphanos (a child deprived of one parent or both, or an adult deprived of a child). Metaphorically it denoted poverty and unspiced food. Its Indo-European root was ORBH (bereft) giving the Latin orbus and the obsolete English words orbation and orbity (orphanhood or childlessness). One bereft of freedom is a slave, forced into hard work, as in the German Arbeit and the Czech robota. Karel Eapek coined the word robot (female robotka) in his play R.U.R. ( Rossum's Universal Robots , 1920) to denote an imagined race of mechanical people. And the etymology reflects the link between orphans and the workhouse. Modern …