Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate HeightA fascinating story of medical experimentation, parental love, and the extreme measures taken to make children fit within ?the norm.' Most people rarely think about their height beyond a little wishing and hoping. But for the parents of children who are ridiculed by their peers for being extraordinarily tall or extraordinarily short, height can cause great anguish. For decades, the medical establishment has responded to these worries by prescribing controversial treatments and therapies for children who fall outside of the ?normal? height range. While some have benefited, many have suffered from devastating side effects. In this riveting book, Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove provide a voice for the parents, doctors, scientists, and pharmaceutical companies involved in these experimental treatments. They also tell the story of the boys and girls themselves, many of them now grown, who were subjected to a wide range of non-FDA-approved medical procedures. These treatments? which consisted of extreme doses of estrogen, pituitary glands taken from both animals and human cadavers, and testosterone injections'often had disastrous side effects. Who is to say how tall is too tall, and how short is too short? For many of the individuals represented in this book, the answers have been clear'and they are grateful to the medical industry for improving upon nature. For others, left in the wake of this same science, the answers are fueled by tragic regret. The authors explore the dueling motives behind these procedures? with parents desperate to help their children ?fit in? and doctors and scientists hungry for scientific breakthroughs. Combining extensive research and in-depth interviews, Normal at Any Cost is the first book to place a human face on this complex and ethically charged medical history. |
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... Christine Cosgrove. AT ANY COST Tall Girls , Short Boys , and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove U.S.A. $ 26.95 Canada $ 33.50 Normal at Any Cost NORMAL Front Cover.
... Christine Cosgrove. AT ANY COST Tall Girls , Short Boys , and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove U.S.A. $ 26.95 Canada $ 33.50 Normal at Any Cost NORMAL Front Cover.
Page iii
... Christine Cosgrove. normal AT ANY COST Tall Girls , Short Boys , and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height SUSAN COHEN AND CHRISTINE COSGROVE JEREMY P. TARCHER / PENGUIN Published by the Penguin Group.
... Christine Cosgrove. normal AT ANY COST Tall Girls , Short Boys , and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height SUSAN COHEN AND CHRISTINE COSGROVE JEREMY P. TARCHER / PENGUIN Published by the Penguin Group.
Page iv
... Christine Cosgrove. JEREMY P. TARCHER / PENGUIN Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group ( USA ) Inc. , 375 Hudson Street , New York , New York 10014 , USA Penguin Group ( Canada ) , 90 Eglinton Avenue East , Suite 700 , Toronto ...
... Christine Cosgrove. JEREMY P. TARCHER / PENGUIN Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group ( USA ) Inc. , 375 Hudson Street , New York , New York 10014 , USA Penguin Group ( Canada ) , 90 Eglinton Avenue East , Suite 700 , Toronto ...
Page vii
... Christine Cosgrove. INTRODUCTION IN THE SUMMER OF 2003 , a man approached an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration on his knees . Deno Andrews was a supplicant . More to the point , he chose to address the commit- tee from ...
... Christine Cosgrove. INTRODUCTION IN THE SUMMER OF 2003 , a man approached an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration on his knees . Deno Andrews was a supplicant . More to the point , he chose to address the commit- tee from ...
Page viii
... Christine Cosgrove. someone is able and willing to pay to improve on heredity , do such boundaries even matter ? Normal at Any Cost describes more than fifty years of medi- cal attempts to modify height in children . The broader purpose ...
... Christine Cosgrove. someone is able and willing to pay to improve on heredity , do such boundaries even matter ? Normal at Any Cost describes more than fifty years of medi- cal attempts to modify height in children . The broader purpose ...
Contents
drug turns young amazons into beauties | 1 |
tallness can be a real handicap for a girl | 3 |
playing god with hormones | 17 |
two girls two continents | 38 |
helping the dwarfed children | 55 |
a gland lost is a gland wasted | 57 |
no patient seems to have caught anything | 84 |
soon very soon | 115 |
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence | 213 |
friendly fire | 236 |
35000 an inchand growing | 267 |
a disease is born | 269 |
now what? | 306 |
a new normal? | 334 |
EPILOGUE | 345 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 354 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adolescent adult height approval Australia biosynthetic hGH Blizzard bone age cancer child Christine Cosgrove Clinical committee Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease daughters developed diagnosed doctors doses drug dwarfism Endocrine estrogen experiment extremely short families final height Genentech genes genetic glands Grossenburg grow growth hor growth hormone deficiency growth hormone therapy Growth Hormone Treatment growth rate Guyda Hintz hormone therapy human growth hormone hypopituitary hypopituitary dwarfism Ibid idiopathic short stature inches injections interview Janet Journal Laura Lawson Wilkins Lilly Lilly's Linda medicine Metabolism mone mother parents Parlow patients pediatric endocrinologists pediatrician percent percentile physicians Pituitary Bank pituitary hGH potential predicted prescribed problems Protropin psychological psychosocial puberty Raben Raiti received recombinant reported Reyersbach risk Sandberg scientists Shirley short children short kids short normal shots side effects Susan Cohen taller tion told Turner syndrome UCSF wanted Wettenhall Wettenhall's Wilhelmi women wrote