Dateline: June 21

Dateline this week explores a contentious debate in New Zealand that asks, “Should parents have the right to stunt the growth of their severely disabled child to make them more physically manageable?”

Rob and Janine are just like any regular parents, living in New Zealand, they have three kids, Daryl-Ann (9), Georgia (3) and Drayven (15 months). Like most parents, they regularly check how tall their children get by marking their height on the wall every few months; however, they won’t be measuring the height of their eldest child, nine-year-old Daryl-Ann, anymore.

Daryl-Ann has cerebral palsy and microcephaly, which means she is severely disabled and unable to do anything on her own – requiring twenty-four hour care.

As a result, Rob and Janine made the drastic decision almost four years ago to stunt Daryl-Ann’s height and growth; using prescribed high doses of hormones to speed up puberty which cause the growth plates at the end of long bones, like legs and arms, to close sooner.

By rushing Daryl-Ann through an early puberty she will never grow to her full adult height.

“It was just so sensible. Why wouldn’t we do it? It just seemed so natural… The taller she gets the more her world gets smaller. The less she gets to do”, Janine tells Dateline’s Amos Roberts.

Single mother Suzi is in a similar situation to Rob and Janine. Doctors have estimated that her twelve-year-old son, Kahn, could get as tall as six-foot. Sadly, Suzi is already struggling to care for and carry Kahn around the house – so six months ago she also opted to stunt Kahn’s growth.

“Why wouldn’t you do that? Why wouldn’t being smaller make life easier and better?”, Suzi tells Dateline.

The right to this treatment has created controversy around the world, including Australia. While there are just a few cases in New Zealand, worldwide there are about seventy recorded cases – most in the United States*.

There are also no publicly reported cases in Australia** – however that won’t stop Kelly Vincent, the Dignity for Disability Party’s representative in South Australian Parliament from speaking out against the practice. She tells Dateline:

“We are very concerned about this so we’ve called on the south Australian government to ensure that children and adults with disability are protected from forced medical treatment.”

*Sourced from a Endocrinologist Survey in the U.S.
**Sourced from Paediatric Endocrinologists in Australia

9:30pm Tuesday on SBS.