HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Natalie Angier and Jonathan Weiner

the breakfast table:
entries

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Short and Sweet

By Natalie Angier
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2000, at 5:18 PM ET

Greetings, Jonnie!

RSS

Ritalin is a very unsettling, complicated medication. People liken it to amphetamines, but as one who used to take diet pills in college to study for physics, I can say that's not a valid comparison. Ritalin is much more of a ditherer. It can make you feel alert, sleepy, focussed, antsy, energetic, distraught, sharp, cotton-headed--sometimes all in a single morning. It's also unpredictable. One day it seems benign; the next day, evil. Unlike your standard Prozac-type antidepressant, Ritalin doesn't require weeks to take effect; it "works," that is, it can be felt, from the first dose onward. That's why doctors sometimes prescribe it as an antidepressant for people who are terminally ill and simply don't have the time to try this or that serotonin-based drug and then wait a couple of months to start feeling better as they head toward ... death. Also, it's said to be good for patients who have suffered strokes or other serious injuries and are so depressed that they can't do the physical therapy they need to start doing pronto if they're ever to get out of bed again. But kids? Again, I don't know how it feels for kids. I just know that it must feel like something, and for a preschool kid who's too young to really talk about it, might it not feel scary?

Giving growth hormone to short kids is also a laughably bad idea. For one thing, most clinical studies to date have shown that it doesn't work for children who are short but not growth-hormone deficient, as the great majority of short children are not. For another, there are possible links between growth-hormone treatments and leukemia. For yet another, are we really incapable of cultural evolution? Is that what we've decided? That we're visual apes, we like a certain phenotype, and if we can create that phenotype, why not do it? We're back again to the need for diversity as a hedge against unforeseen pathogens, cultural and intellectual pathogens as much as physical ones. What about those of us who don't like tall men, who prefer short men? We're out there, believe it or not, right next to the guys who prefer flat-chested women.

Maybe a change is afoot. Bradley's towering height isn't doing him much good, is it? And though George W. is tall de facto, he's still a shrub de jure.

Cheers from 5' 3½",
Natalie