Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy Another segment at work, lol...they started off talking about "There are many reasons why people are short...if a child is *exceptionally* short, should that be considered a medically-treatable illness?" And this 15 year-old guy who has a growth hormone deficiency is interviewed, and he's been taking human growth hormone shots every day for 5 years now. The daily shots can cost over $100,000. The expected gain is about 3 inches---about $40,000 per inch. Human growth hormone shot side effects: joint pain and swelling, scoliosis, headaches. I couldn't believe it when they said this kid would've been about 5 foot 7 without the hormones, but he is now expected to be a full 5 foot 10. So he would have been about 5 foot 7? I know I'm a TALL drink o' water, but when they started out talking about people being "*exceptionally* short", I thought the kid in the segment was gonna be like 5'1" or somethin'. 5'7"? That's only about 2 1/2" from the average 5'9"ish height of the American male (about 68 % are between 5'6" and 5'11"...trivia for the day, amaze your friends!). A "medically-treatable illness" to be a couple o' inches shorter than average? Well, if ya wanna spend dozens of thousands of dollars, I guess...
Originally Posted By DlandJB 5' 7" doesn't seem short to me (but then I'm 5'1" nobody seems short to me) that seems like a very extreme treatment in this particular case.
Originally Posted By DAR I have a friend who's 5'3, we always tease him about his height. This coming from a group where the tallest guy is 6'1
Originally Posted By trekkeruss I suppose that the $100,000 might pay off in the future, as it has been shown in studies that taller people tend to make more money. I saw a show on Discovery the other night, about primodial dwarves. They are dwarves who are proportionally small. I think they said they thought there are about 100 primordial dwarves in the world, with 40 here in north America. They showed five; one girl was a teenager, and she was 2 foot-something, and weighed 14 pounds. Here is a picture of her and her younger brother, who is also a primordial dwarf, along with a normal two year old friend: <a href="http://www.voice-online.co.uk/images/10758.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.voice-online.co.uk/ images/10758.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy <I suppose that the $100,000 might pay off in the future, as it has been shown in studies that taller people tend to make more money.> Yeah, but I would expect that to work for over 6 feet tall, not around average height. And I do like that line of thinking. According to it though, I'm WAY underpaid!
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger 5'7" is exceptionally short?! Good grief! I would consider medically treatable to be (maybe) under 5' for a guy, but 5'7"? I sure hope this isn't taxpayer dollars we're talking about.
Originally Posted By Tiggirl I'm 5'3. Can I use "Extreme Shortness" as an exscuse to call in sick to work? ~Beth
Originally Posted By Tiggirl <elbows jonvn> Way to miss the joke! p LOL! I know 5'3 doesn't count as EXTREME shorness (although since I can't reach anything in the upper kitcken cupboards, it sometimes feels like it might count) but neither should 5'7 count as extreme shortness in a man. And I think that was the point of TALL's post. ~Beth
Originally Posted By TALL Disney Guy Yeah, like I said, I was thinking closer to the 5'-5'3" range, if not shorter, since they did say "*exceptionally*", emphasized. Weird.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 I saw something on the tube not too long ago that mentioned the effects of nutrition on height. I remember walking through old buildings in London and Dublin with doorways barely 5 feet tall, and I had always thought that the increasing height of people was just an evolutionary thing, but it turns out that better nutrition hastens the increase in heights of people worldwide. During the Little Ice Age in medieval Europe, it was difficult to grow crops and people's nutrition suffered. Records show a stagnation in the otherwise increasing heights of Europeans, a halt which ended when the earth began to warm again, and more nutritious crops could be grown in greater quantities. People have increased their heights ever since the end of the little Ice Age, but in parts of the world where nutrition is a problem, similar "freezes" in the growth of some populations has occurred.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<The expected gain is about 3 inches---about $40,000 per inch.>> I was thinking that would probably be worth it for some guys until I realized you were talking about overall height... ;-)
