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Comment by faangguyindia | Hacker News Reader

In class 10th biology I was shocked to learn human stature does not change after puberty after growth plates are closed.

It seems new research believes this is not to be case.

We've evidence of a person who was dwarf till age 19, and later growth up to 233cm (7'4)

I wonder how long it will take with modern genetic engineering where we can resume growth in people.

I bet you can raise hell lot of money of someone decides to work on this problem, there are so many short people, short billionaores, dictators in the world who would invest to become taller.

So is anyone working on it?

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> In class 10th biology I was shocked to learn human stature does not change after puberty after growth plates are closed.

Well this is the thing about high school biology. It's greatly simplified, and almost everything you learn should have the disclaimer usually.

Late growth is not common, but not extremely rare.

Peter Schultz and team has been working on this problem for more than a decade. His company Ambrx was founded 10 years ago. They've done ok with fundraising, but I'm not sure he raised 'a hell of a lot of money'. Sure the science seems promising, but it has been, and will be slow. I'd expect it to be more complicated than swapping out a couple amino acids and people grow 4 feet and are otherwise healthy. That and I'm pretty sure they are focused on things other needs than making mid-life billionaires and dictators 4 feet taller.

tbh I have never heard about it.

You can raise money from crowdsourcing and everywhere, it's such a big problem.

People wanting to become taller isn't as controversial as people wanting to become whiter

>We've evidence of a person who was dwarf till age 19, and later growth up to 233cm (7'4)

What is that evidence?

His wiki page probably has sources, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rainer

But in anycase this has little to do with genetics, the poor guy's pituitary was a mess

Why would a billionaire or a dictator need to be taller? You already have enough power, status, and respect. It doesn't seem like a worthwhile investment at that point.

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