Name Norman Wettenhall Role Doctor | ||
Died 2000, Melbourne, Australia | ||
Education University of Melbourne | ||
Dr Henry Norman Burgess Wettenhall AM (born 1915 and died 2000) was an Australian paediatric endocrinologist, philanthropist, bibliophile and amateur ornithologist. Wettenhall was born in London and his family migrated to Australia, where they lived in Toorak, Victoria. He was educated at Glamorgan, The Geelong College and the University of Melbourne, where he graduated from medicine in 1940. He also trained in paediatric endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Wettenhall built his international reputation in paediatrics on the use of estrogen to stunt the growth of Australian girls. It is widely agreed that he did more than any other doctor worldwide to popularise the treatment, and it is estimated that he personally treated over 1200 Australian girls from approximately 1962 to 1985. For many years he prescribed pre-pubescent girls high doses of diethylstilbestrol (DES) in an attempt to bring on early puberty, and as such stunt growth. DES was later shown to have disastrous long-term effects on his patients such as infertility and cancer. In the mid 1970s, when the ill effects of DES became widely known and accepted, Wettenhall altered to prescribing ethinylestradiol; however, this has also demonstrated similar long-term detrimental effects.
Wettenhall's controversial treatment also proved to have other detrimental effects on his patients with a large percentage who participated in a survey (2000) citing psychological issues including depression, low self-esteem and anxiety post treatment. These issues were anecdotally brought on by a lack of understanding of the patients of what they were agreeing in regards to treatment, and changes in social attitudes towards tall women.
His treatment was also brought to light by the Australian media in 1997, originally in an article by The Age (Melbourne), reporting an inquiry that was being undertaken by Australia's federal health department regarding girls who were subjected to a trial of DES to control their height outcomes. Concerned ex-patients, and parents of ex-patients, contacted the media, leading to a flurry of media coverage regarding the issue. A group of ex-patients who called themselves 'Tall Girls inc', demanded an inquiry into the long-term effects of the treatment, especially DES, which it appeared was used as a 'trial', not as an approved medical treatment. Wettenhall refused to partake in the inquiry.
In the same year, however, he launched the Norman Wettenhall Foundation, which provides grants for environmental causes; especially those with a focus on Australian birds - a particular interest of his.
In 2004, he was a central subject of the book "Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate height", by authors Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove, Penguin 2004.
He was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), President 1978-1983, and elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1989. He was the principal fundraiser for the RAOU's Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds project. He was a Member of the Order of Australia.