HGH injections

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

A couple things about the Cecil’s HGH column

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040709.html

  1. The use of the term “abnormally small.” The FDA has approved the use of daily HGH injections for children who project to be short as adults. Even kids who show no signs of HGH deficiency can get the injections. These people may be short, but shortness in and of itself is not an abnormality.

  2. (This is not directly related to the point of Cecil’s column, but it makes for an interesting aside). The use of HGH taken from the pituitary glands of cadavers has taken a devastating toll on some of the recipients of those injections (mostly short kids). In the United States there have been twenty-six reported cases of people developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (which is the human version of “Mad Cow” disease). At least three of these people have died. Overseas, at least one hundred and thirty-four more infections have been reported, most of them in France. The practice of using cadavers as the source of HGH was abolished in 1985. The synthetic version Cecil mentioned is now used. There are several side affects of the synthetic hormone (such as headaches) and the long-term risks still contain an element of the unknown, but Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is no longer one of them.