Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest toManipulate Height
Science journalist Cohen and Cosgrove, a WebMD contributor, offer an emotionally charged indictment of the medical-pharmaceutical complex centered on efforts to control height (making boys taller, girls shorter) in otherwise normal, healthy children. Reviewing five decades of such efforts, such as in the 1950s with the administration of estrogen to stunt tall girls' growth, the authors take to task pediatric endocrinologists, drug companies and the parents who bring their children for treatment. This history is meant as a cautionary tale, and Cohen and Cosgrove raise all the right questions: when do we cross the line from treating disease to satisfying desires for perfection? can the exorbitant cost of growth hormone therapy be justified in an otherwise inadequate health system? do drug companies distort the practice of medicine? does government adequately protect the public? Because it can take decades for the ill effects of treatment to emerge, this account can only raise questions about possible threats from current practices. Fortunately, the treatments much of the book is devoted to are no longer in use.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.