Need any human be destined for shortness?

Press, 31 October 1984, Page 45

Need any human be destined for shortness?

NZPA-Reuter Providence Should children destined never to reach average height be given drugs to make them taller? That question reflects a serious ethical problem arising because medical researchers have discovered a way to mass-produce the hormone necessary for normal growth in humans. The development has prompted fear that parents and . their doctors will give the hormone to children in an attempt to increase their height. The irony is that there is now little evidence that the hormone will work in healthy children whose bodies are producing normal amounts of growth hormone to begin with. But researchers such as Dr Louis Underwood, of the University of North Carolina, are already predicting that the development will put pressure on doctors to give the hormone to help youngsters who are destined for hereditary reasons alone to be below normal in height. According to Dr Philip Gruppuso, a pediatrician and biochemist with Brown University’s medical school in Providence, the pressure

has already begun. He says parents of small children are already inquiring about the hormone. “In a society that values tallness ... it is anticipated that much of that pressure will come from parents whose children, although not truly short, are not fulfilling parental expectations in competitive sports, social interaction and academic achievement,” Dr Underwood wrote recently in the “New England Journal of Medicine.” “Physicians will be forced to decide whether it is appropriate to tamper with a normal child in the hope of making him or her ‘better’.” Dr Underwood also said that he had seen a "recent flurry of interest in growth hormone on the part of athletes who hope that treatment will increase their strength, athletic performance, and even their height.” Until now, treatment with growth hormone has been restricted to children whose pituitary glands cannot make enough of it The number of youngsters treated has been limited by the fact that the hormone had to be extracted from pituitary glands taken from

corpses. But new genetic engineering techniques will soon make the hormone widely available. Researchers know that the hormone will not increase a person’s height once he or she reaches maturity. In addition, it has not been proven that the hormone will increase the height of any normal child, said Dr Ivor Jackson, of Rhode Island Hospital, because it “has not been given to short-statured children long enough.” Such tests are difficult, he said, “because it is not uncommon for a child to be 7.5 to 10 cm taller than their parents,” making it difficult to tell whether the hormone really helped or not Even if the treatment did work for normal children, they raise troublesome ethical questions because the treatments must begin at a very early age, last for years, and involve painful injections three times a week. In addition, some short children may, in retrospect, not need the treatments. “Some children have a growth spurt at puberty,”

said Dr Jackson. There are also lingering questions of whether the hormone will trigger the body’s immune system to attack the natural form of the hormone produced by the body and whether additional growth will cause subtle deformities or brittle bones, according to Dr Jackson. Still, Dr Underwood reported, researchers are anxious to test the hormone on healthy children because “severe shortness of stature is not a trivial problem.” But some researchers question whether such tests should be done at all because they stigmatise short people and because it is unfair to expose children to the risks of the hormone. Ruth Hubbard, a professor of biology at Harvard University, says, “Growth hormone is a substance we know very little about These children are given shots three times a week for months. "They will have to be followed (for years to see if there are hidden effects). They have been made guinea pigs par excellence.”