diagnostic process of genetic skeletal dysplasias. The anthropometric measurements include height, sitting height, arm span, upper/ lower-body segment ratio, sitting height/height ratio, and arm span/height ratio for age. They also aid in the differential diagnosis of skeletal dysplasia subtypes. Treatment The decision to treat is based on a belief that the child will be disabled by being extremely short as an adult, so that the risks of treatment (including sudden death) will outweigh the risks of not treating the symptom of short stature. Although short children commonly report being teased about their height, most adults who are very short are not physically or psychologically disabled by their height. However, there is some evidence to suggest that there is an inverse linear relationship with height and with risk of suicide. Treatment is expensive and requires many years of injections with human growth hormones. The result depends on the cause, but is typically an increase in final height of about taller than predicted. Thus, treatment takes a child who is expected to be much shorter than a typical adult and produces an adult who is still obviously shorter than average. For example, several years of successful treatment in a girl who is predicted to be as an adult may result in her being instead. Increasing final height in children with short stature may be beneficial and could enhance health-related quality of life outcomes, barring troublesome side effects and excessive cost of treatments. Cost The cost of treatment depends on the amount of growth hormone given, which in turn depends on the child's weight and age. One year's worth of drugs normally costs about US$20,000 for a small child and over $50,000 for a teenager. These drugs are normally taken for five or more years. Cultural issues From a social perspective shortness can be a problem independently of the cause. In many societies there are advantages associated with taller stature and disadvantages associated with shorter stature, and vice versa. Pharmaceutical companies Genentech and Eli Lilly, makers of human growth hormone, have worked to medicalize short stature by convincing the public that short stature is a disease rather than a natural variation in human height. Limiting sales of the hormone to children diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency, rather than being short for any reason, limited their sales market. Expanding it to all children whose height was below the third percentile would create 90,000 new