For children who are actually deficient in growth hormones, the drug can increase height by six inches, but for other short children, Frankel says, it only increases height by one or two inches, or causes children to grow faster but no taller than they would have without the drug. For these short children, the drug may also have dangerous side effects — including hypertension, kidney damage and leukemia — that doctors are not warning parents about, she says.

Up to half of the some 15,000 to 20,000 children currently being treated with hGH in the United States do not have classical growth-hormone deficiency, she says. With some insurance companies now covering the growth hormones for healthy children — which cost about $20,000 a year for an average of five years — Frankel wonders, "Is this where we want to use our scarce health care dollars?"

Frankel, who lives in Massachusetts and is an adviser to the board of the National Organization for Short Statured Adults, hopes to alert the nation about heightism. "My point I want to get across is that we're asking the wrong question: not how to make short kids taller but how to end height prejudice."

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