Byline: David Brown Washington Post
I s being short a problem for which medicine is the solution?
A group of scientists at the National Institutes of Health believes the answer may be yes, and has embarked on an experiment to boost the height of very short but otherwise healthy children by giving them human growth hormone throughout their teenage years.
A watchdog group in Washington, however, has petitioned the government to halt the research, saying it is unethical, violates federal regulations governing experiments on children and threatens to ring in a brave new world in which genetically engineered drugs are used to enforce society's prejudices.
"This is the big fear that we've always had about genetic engineering - that it would be used for social purposes and not medical purposes," said Jeremy Rifkin, whose organization, the Foundation on Economic Trends, plans to sue if NIH does not voluntarily halt the four-year-old experiment.
But the scientists directing the study also claim a high moral purpose in their effort to evaluate a treatment that is increasingly demanded by parents of short children - and prescribed by physicians - despite its unknown effects.
"If the study …
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