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Forget about swine flu, the kids at Dalton are suffering from shortness. The fancy pants Upper East Side school is filled with boys battling the problem. The cause: being a child. The cure: parents armed with growth hormones.
The NY Post reports on a few of the kids — one, Jeffrey, went on the Humatrope hormone at age 10. In just five years he shot up from 4'1" to 5'7" ... and still has hopes of growing more. One expert told the paper the designer drug is like "Miracle-Gro for kids." (Guess they didn't want to go with a painful bone-lengthening procedure.)
Why is this legal? In 2003 the Food and Drug Administration changed their regulations, allowing "any child who falls into the 1.2 percentile of height for their age" to go on the growth pills. However, in Jeffrey's case, his parent's new insurance (Aetna) won't cover his monthly shots (which cost $2,400); they say that he doesn't have a growth-hormone deficiency, but rather suffers from "short stature." His mother is now taking Aetna to court in Manhattan, where she will try to get them to cover her son's forced final inches.
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Did his parents want to make his penis grow as well?
Designer kids. Great.
I don't think HGH actually works on stuff like that, so you'll get adults that are taller than they would be with small units.
That's gotta suck. I'd rather be an abnormally short guy with a big hose than a tall guy with a small one.
This is why insurance companies hate us.
That's right.
Yeah, like anyone else reading this wouldn't have done the same' thing if given the option that you could be 5'8" versus 4'11" when you were 17.
Hypocrites!
Short does suck!
Amen. It shouldn't surprise anyone if the same people who babel about nature were the same who made short jokes, or laughed at them, about Ross Perot, Bloomberg, AC/DC, etc.
The kid was 10 years old. *TEN* years old.
Wouldn't the kid have grown pretty close to that much anyway? I mean a foot and a half is a lot, but between 10 and 15 there's a ton of growing that naturally would have happened.
I grew nearly three inches between the ages of 22 and 25, and I'm a woman. WTF are they forcing nature for, it'll happen.
What the hell is wrong with these people?! So the kid is short... WHO CARES?? Should my insurance cover my hair dye because I wasn't born a blonde? Mommy says she's buying him the growth that he is "Owed"? Owed by whom? Talk about entitlement complexes! Please. If these schmucks have enough money to send their kid to Dalton, they've got enough money to cough up for some medically unnecessary cosmetic procedure.
If you know anything about growth hormones you know this is a joke. Growth hormones add 2-3 inches max. And yes, the poor abused boy in this story would have grown as much, or nearly as much, without being forcefed artificial stimulants. I wonder if he'll blame his mother when he develops cancer in 20 years?
And they are peeping baby birds with blue eyes forced to grow so fast and abnormally large, most of them go to slaughter with painful lameness. First chicks and now kids. not surprising.
the bigger problem is that a large percentage of americans believe personal problems can be easily solved with the magic of medicine. a quick snip, pill, injection, or suction and all your problems are whisked (or drained) away.
I was on growth hormone twenty years ago. I had no idea it was controversial.
Babble all you want. I personally like being (just barely) of average height. The world is hard enough without it.
"Yeah, like anyone else reading this wouldn't have done the same' thing if given the option that you could be 5'8" versus 4'11" when you were 17."
"I was on growth hormone twenty years ago. I had no idea it was controversial.
Babble all you want. I personally like being (just barely) of average height. The world is hard enough without it."
Sure, but the issue isn't whether this is something that the parents or children should be willing to do (go ahead, knock yourself out), the issue is whether health insurance should pay for it as an entitlement. And, I'm sorry, but there's no reason why it should be. I'm not particularly tall either (somewhere between 5'8" and 5'9") and I'd certainly like to be taller and would have probably been interested in this sort of treatment if I'd known it was available when I was younger, but that doesn't make it any less of a vanity procedure than a nose job or breast implants.
The insurance did pay for it until he reached average height. Now the asshole parents want AETNA to keep paying for some reason. They probably feel guilty for the short genes they passed down, or for the lack of nutrition he received (I have a 4-year-old who's just 6 inches shorter than this kid was when he was 10). It's hard to imagine they'll win their case though.
I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her...
It's not bad being short
Makes it easy to contort
Different ways to bend and pretend. lol
It's always funny when the uppercrust learns about the downsides of inbreeding.
@nicemarmot -Cleary you don't know anything about human growth hormone. First, taking growth hormone can add more than 2-3 inches to a person's height - It depends upon when the injections are first started. In this case, 10 years old, so 5 inches of growth would not be unheard of. Second, there is absolutley no scientific connection between cancer and HGH taken when the body is lacking appropriate levels (I am not speaking of people who take hgh later in life for anti aging purposes).
Doctors can establish when the body will stop growing.This kid's endocrinologist probably determined that his allotment of hgh was too low for him to reach an average height...EVER. He is not exactly a giant at this point and growth on hgh slows just as it does with natural hormones.
"forced final inches"
I've seen that movie.
lol
I only saw the first half!
I'm 5'5" and latino. Hasn't stopped me from doing anything in this crazy world.
oh please, 5'7" is perfectly FINE. that makes him an inch or two shy of average male height. i remember boys in high school shooting up several inches from 16 to 17 years of age. give this dumbass kid a hormone-free year and see how tall he gets naturally through regular frigging puberty.
i'm really glad i'm not short. this sounds really unhealthy.
Those in vitro kiddies are tiny.
For decades the Dalton School has been producing Frankensteins, how is this any different?
Fucking stupid assholes going to have another generation of fucking idiot kids.
People I know who took growth hormones when they were younger totally screwed their natural growth process. It gave them a quick sprout, then they stalled out, and became hairier than gorillas in the process.
Either way, on on earth can anyone expect their insurance company to pay for this?
At this point (especially) with his age and height, enough is enough already.
If the hormones haven't screwed him up the process has surely messed with his ideals.