Should Short Kids Use Growth Hormones?

June 19 -- — When it comes to your child, how short is too short?

That question has experts split in a fierce debate over the safety and ethics and cosmetically enhancing kids' height, following a government advisory panel's recommendation that growth hormone be approved for use in healthy but unusually short children.

The hormone known as Humatrope, made by Eli Lilly, is now approved only for use in children with rare medical conditions. But the Food and Drug Administration is now mulling the possibility of expanding its use to make extremely short children — boys under 5 foot 3 inches and girls under 4 foot 11 inches — grow taller than they naturally would. The cutoff point to be considered eligible for treatment is under age 14.

Some believe approval of human growth hormone for non-medical reasons will rescue "vertically challenged" children from the societal stigma of being small. But others worry about the implications of such a decision: Will this send a message that short stature is a sickness, an abnormality in need of a "cure"?

It's Not Easy Being Short

No matter what size you may be, it is not difficult to empathize with the plight of a short kid born into a society that seems to revere massive professional athletes and where advertising thrives on images of tall, leggy supermodels.

Short kids report in some studies that they fall victim to the teasing of their peers, while other research shows there are real differences in the way people are treated based on their height.

Nicole Costa, 17, who testified before the FDA after receiving what she refers to as "life-changing" growth hormone injections, remembers that at age 6, "The kids were like, 'Your legs aren't long enough. You can't play in these games. You don't run fast enough.' And, I couldn't reach the water fountain."

Being small in a tall world can take a serious psychological toll on a child, many experts feel. It's for that reason some doctors have been willing to prescribe the "off-label" use of human growth hormones in healthy but extremely small kids.