Stop targeting healthy short children

Many short kids are perfectly healthy. Their height is a matter of genetic makeup rather than any medical problem resulting in short stature. Despite this, many parents are turning to human growth hormone injections in an attempt to add inches to their offspring. While it is understandable that parents worry about their children's short stature since we live in a society that engages in heightism (the pervasive cultural bias favoring the tall over the short), employing human growth hormone treatments potentially is harmful on many levels, maintains Ellen Frankel in Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature and Inner Growth.

In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of human growth hormone therapy for very short, healthy children, yet the safety and efficacy of this practice raises many red flags, Frankel insists. The treatment involves subjecting a youngster to daily injections over a five-year period at an annual cost of $20,000. Research has revealed that, on average, a child may add 1 1/2 inches to final adult height, if any added inches occur at all.

It appears that, while some children may grow faster as a result of treatment, they do not necessarily grow taller; they simply reach their adult height sooner. Moreover, there possibly are serious side effects that include a possible association with certain cancers, hypertension, spontaneous bone fractures, headaches, fevers, stomach disorders, vomiting, impaired glucose tolerance, kidney damage, and a worsening of scoliosis.

Many parents and doctors believe that adding inches to a short child's height will increase self-esteem. However, the treatment itself potentially may do just the opposite, as what is the youngster to think about his or her own height if doctors and parents are prescribing growth hormone treatment--that being short is unacceptable and therefore that they are unacceptable?

While it is true that being noticeably short can be an ever-present stressor in the lives of young children and adults, from school playgrounds to corporate boardrooms, the great majority of problems stem from the social prejudice directed against short individuals rather than any inherent problem in being short itself, Frankel concludes.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning