More Parents Push Growth Hormones on Kids

Parents anxious over their children’s below-average height are turning to hormone treatments, fueling a growing market for expensive injections that can continue for years. A Jiangsu Province mother gave her 10-year-old daughter more than 100,000 yuan (US$14,705.9) worth of hormone injections for 18 months because she was growing more slowly than other children. Another media report told of a mother who found that after three months of weekly injections, her 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with unusually high sex steroid levels from the injections. Experts said that growth hormones are not only expensive but can be dangerous to a child’s health outside of treatments for specific conditions. They also warned parents not to give their children hormone injections or medicines not prescribed by a doctor.