if tumours on the pituitary gland can make people grow taller, why can’t medical science just stimulate this gland on dwarves and those with stunted growth as a form of correctional medicine?
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You are correct that pituitary dysfunction can be a cause of dwarfism, but it is only one of more than a dozen causes. If a person with slow growth or delayed puberty is found to have pituitary dysfunction (typically growth hormone deficiency), then growth hormone is given by injection. I saw kids in my residency who were getting growth hormone injections. Typically, they are below normal on the growth charts, and if the diagnosis is delayed long enough, it is clear that they should have entered puberty but have not.
You don’t try to stimulate the pituitary gland. It makes like 8 different hormones. Would you all want them to get produced in larger quantities? Anyway, you can’t stimulate the pituitary from outside the nervous system. It gets stimulated anyway by the hypothalamus, which lies directly above it in the brain, and sometimes the problem lies with the hypothalamus (e.g., growth hormone releasing hormone [GHRH] deficiency). Pituitary control is a very delicate process. Other causes of dwarfism involve receptor abnormalities, cell signaling abnormalities, abnormalities in chromosome number (e.g., Turner syndrome, XO), abnormalities of the bone growth process, and the list goes on. Not fixable with supplementation of any substance.
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