The Little People

Assembling more than 250 dwarfs and midgets for a lawn party and a whirl of dances may seem like a Barnum and Bailey act, but last week that many members of an organization called the Little People of America convened in Baltimore for medically scientific as well as social reasons. The hosts were Dr. Victor A. McKusick and 15 colleagues at the Moore Clinic of Johns Hopkins Hospital, the nation's leading investigators into the causes of dwarfism and possible remedies for it. Their invited guests were essential past and future participants in Moore Clinic research.

The Little People's organization was founded in 1957 by Billy Barty, one of the few who conform to the popular misconception that most midgets are in show business. Barty is, and has done well.* Now 43, Barty stands 3 ft. 9 in. He arrived with Wife Shirley, 4 ft. 3 in., and their daughter Lori, who at age five measures 3 ft. 1 in. Anthropometrists say Lori probably will never top 4 ft. 7 in., so the Little People classify her as "Little Little."

Medically Oriented. McKusick's team had already examined most of the association members, piecing together family trees, taking blood and cell specimens to study chromosomes and hormones and X-raying joints to look at cartilage-bone defects. A great deal of work remains to be done, so 18 Little People arrived days ahead of time. They were admitted to the hospital for detailed tests by orthopedists, ophthalmologists, and otolaryngologists. Especially concerned were the gynecologists, for dwarf women's babies usually have to be delivered by caesarean section. Of the dozen conventions the Little People have had, this was by far the most medically oriented. To handle all the examinations, a temporary hospital room was set up in the Lord Baltimore Hotel, convention headquarters.

All this work is necessary, says McKusick, because to treat or prevent dwarfism it first must be clearly defined. That is not as easy as it sounds. Beyond the rough classification of midgets as people of short but otherwise normal body build, and dwarfs as having some other physical abnormality in addition to short stature, McKusick lists 20 different conditions as causes of subnormal growth. Among the conventioneers, he found at least one representative of almost all the types, and some who appeared to fit no known category, suggesting that the classification table will now have to be extended.

"We have," says McKusick, "been paying special attention to the children, whose growth is not complete, whose epiphyses [the growing ends of long bones] haven't yet closed. We have more than 30 of them here." The hope is that some of these children can be helped, by injections of human growth hormone, to grow to 5 ft. or more, in which case they would no longer qualify as Little People.

Concession to Bigness. The likeliest candidates for this help are children with otherwise normal physiques whose pituitary glands do not produce enough of the hormone. Even for them the supply problem is forbidding. Growth hormone from animals is useless for man unless it is specially processed, and little of this is now produced. Human growth hormone must be extracted, in minute quantities, from the pituitaries of cadavers. Each year the National Pituitary Agency in Baltimore gets about 75,000 of these glands, mostly from pathologists exploring the skull in postmortem examinations. The agency supplies the Hopkins with extracts from the glands. It takes the hormone from 150 or more glands to treat one child for a year. For victims of the commonest type of dwarfism, achondroplasia, marked by short limbs, large heads and "scooped out" noses, no hormonal or other treatment is effective.

Regardless of whether they can be helped to grow, most of the Little People are determined to show that they can compete on an equal basis with big people in today's world and do not have to fall back upon the circus for a livelihood. Robert Spector, last week's convention chairman, is a Ph.D. working on chemistry patents for Du Pont. Lee Kitchens, an electronics engineer for Texas Instruments and the outgoing Little People's president, literally soared into town, flying his own plane from Richardson, Texas. Since he stands only 4 ft. 1 in., the rudder pedals on his Piper Tri-Pacer have been built up about nine inches to meet his feet.

* As has Michael Dunn (Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Ship of Fools), who missed the Baltimore meeting. He was in Europe making a movie.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.