Word: dwarf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Anderson's taste in satire is sometimes a shade too obvious, and he shares with Ford a sentimentality that can play him false, but the very impact and size of the movie (about three hours long) seem to dwarf even its mistakes. What will be remembered is not the occasional false steps but the prevailing tone of high spirits and ferocious humor in such scenes as a sex show behind a respectable hotel, or a trade meeting with an emerging African nation that manages to be both hilarious and horrifying...
Erick has indeed been growing at a faster rate than most of the other 50,000 dwarfs in the U.S. have experienced. But that is only because he has had expert medical help; six months ago, his mother enrolled him in the dwarf clinic operated by the University of California at Los Angeles, the only facility in the world devoted exclusively to the treatment and study of dwarfism. There, twice a week, he receives an injection of a pituitary hormone, the primary substance that triggers human growth. He has grown 2½ in. (to 4 ft. 10 in.) since treatment...
Short Supply. The dwarf clinic, now marking its second anniversary, is the creation of Dr. David Rimoin, a U.C.L.A. geneticist and one of the world's leading authorities on dwarfism. Rimoin believes that the condition (which occurs once in every 10,000 births in the U.S.) is almost universally misunderstood, largely because so few doctors have taken the trouble to learn about it. Says he: "To most doctors, all dwarfs look alike...
Most doctors might see only one dwarf professionally during their careers; Rimoin's clinic, located at Los Angeles' Harbor General Hospital and staffed by ten physicians, sees 500 a year. Rimoin and his colleagues can now identify at least 50 types of dwarfism, and have determined the causes of many of these abnormalities. Midgets, who are tiny but normally proportioned, are usually victims of an underactive pituitary gland, a pea-sized organ at the base of the brain that is largely responsible for the secretion of growth hormone (HGH). Other dwarfs, who tend to have normal-sized heads...
Others credit the clinic with preserving their sanity. Los Angeles House wife Shirley Figone, who is normal sized, was upset about her dwarf son Chris, 2, until Rimoin arranged for her to meet a dwarf couple with the opposite problem - their normal-sized daughter was embarrassed by them. The meeting helped breach the isolation that so often surrounds dwarfs and their families. "We're saving a scrapbook for Chris, cutting out any newspaper stories we can find concerning little people," says Mrs. Figone. "We want him to know that he's not alone...