Dr. Jamie Guevara of the Ecuador Institute of Endocrinology measures the height of patients with... 
(Jeffrey Kofman/ABC News)
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Larons have historically lived extraordinarily long lives. There isn't a single community of small people here; they are scattered in towns and remote villages within 100 miles of the main city, Piñas. In these parts they are affectionately called Viejitos -- little old people -- because they appear to age prematurely.
Guevara took us to meet the oldest living Laron, an exuberant 85-year-old woman named Pastorita. Her traditional diet of farm produce has kept her healthy. Younger Larons are dying early because their small hearts can't handle the fats and cholesterol of the fast food that many prefer to eat.
We stop at a modest but well-manicured house outside the town of Balsas. Out walks Norman Apolo, normal in every sense, except he is less than 4 feet tall. He tells us he realized he had a growth disorder, at 6 or 7 years old, when was in primary school.
A husband and father of three, Apolo leads a remarkably normal life. He is a respected high school teacher and writer, and he maintains a small farm. Despite his stature, he can drive a car with extensions on the pedals.
Apolo says he was surprised to discover that there was a term for his condition.
"These are questions of nature, questions of God that I had not accepted," Apolo says. "There was always a possibility that I'd be OK."
Three hundred miles away in Quito, the capital, Guevara tracks his extraordinary patients from his offices at the Ecuador Institute of Endocrinology.
"What I routinely do is record the patients either in video or photographs, their heights, time by time," he says as he towers over four Laron patients who had come in for checkups. "This is very important, because I have documented their heights since they were kids until today." The syndrome was first identified 40 years ago by an Israeli scientist, Dr. Zvi Laron, who saw the condition in a dozen patients in Israel and Eastern Europe.
Incredibly, it is believed the Ecuadorian Larons share a single common ancestor, probably of Jewish heritage, who fled southern Spain hundreds of years ago during the Spanish Inquisition. Generations ago they became Catholics and their heritage was forgotten. Genetic testing shows that one of the Laron dwarfs in Israel is almost certainly a distant cousin. Presumably, his ancestors fled southern Spain for Eastern Europe and then what is now Israel.
"So one of them evidently came here, brought the genetic disease with him because of inbreeding," Guevara says. "Very high inbreeding in this area because these are very isolated areas, the likelihood of a disease such as this, this disease became expressed in some people."
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