Co. seeks to use growth hormones in kids

A drug company sought government permission Tuesday for a controversial practice: injecting growth hormone into very short but otherwise healthy children, in hopes of increasing their adult height by roughly 2 inches.

It's a highly charged issue: Is it appropriate to give years of drug injections to children not diagnosed with an actual height-harming disease? Or would it open the floodgates to normal kids just yearning for an extra few inches?

Growth hormone is not to augment growth of normal-height children, but would be restricted to the abnormally short, Eli Lilly & Co. stressed to a panel of government advisers convened to debate the issue. Lilly's cutoff would be boys predicted to be shorter than 5-feet, 3-inches as adults and girls shorter than 4-feet-11.

Apparently Eli Lilly isn't concerned about advocating a completely unnecessary and potentially harmful therapy for otherwise healthy children even though the thimerosal issue is still an open wound for so many.

Since when can it be 'predicted' how short someone will be with such accuracy?