Ashlee VanceNYT Best Seller | Reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek

95% of Rare Diseases Have NO Treatment - 30 Million Americans Affected"

12 Jun 2025 · 0 min

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In this brief monologue, the speaker outlines the massive public‑health burden of rare genetic diseases in the United States. He explains that a rare disease is defined as affecting fewer than 200,000 people, but when all such conditions are combined they impact roughly 10% of the U.S. population—about 30 million individuals. Strikingly, 95% of these diseases have no approved treatment, and half of the affected population are children. The speaker emphasizes the urgency of this unmet medical need.

There's thousands of these different diseases that are individually exceedingly rare, meaning like, you know, less than 200,000 people. That's how it's defined in the US. But if you add them all up, you're talking about actually 10% of the US population, around 30 million Americans are affected by these rare genetic diseases and 95% of them have no treatment. Right. Think about that. Forget about a cure. Right. 95% don't even have a treatment. And about 50% of those who are affected are children.