World's tallest man has trouble finding shoes, car, bicycle

[snopes]

Leonid Stadnik's phenomenal height has forced him to quit a job he loved and to stoop as he moves around his house.

But Stadnik, who Guinness World Records says is the world's tallest human, says his condition has also taught him that there are many kindhearted strangers.

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/art...an0324-ON.html

[Furienna]

Poor guy... (440 pounds doesn't sound too heavy though, when you're 8 feet 5 inches.)

[Elkhound]

He also has a specially made bike. Perhaps now that he has transportation options he can take up his veterenary practice again.

[Furienna]

Wow, that IS a large man!

And excuse me, we use the metric system in Sweden, so even though I'm rather good at converting imperial units to metric units in my head, I managed to miscalculate this man's weight. So 440 pounds might be a lot even for a man at 8 feet 5 inches (253 centimetres). He must weigh like 200 kilograms!

[trlkly]

While your calculation of his mass/weight is accurate, you're a little shy on his height. An 8'5" person would be 257cm.

I'm not trying to sound smart or anything. I used Google to convert them. I was just impressed at how accurate your mental conversions were!

[Troberg]

I'm not trying to sound smart or anything. I used Google to convert them. I was just impressed at how accurate your mental conversions were!

There is an easy trick. 4 inches is 0.1 m (actually, 0.1016 m, but close enough). However, feel free to take your Fahrenheit and stuff them where the sun don't shine...

[snopes]

A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female has died, a friend said. She was 53.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080813/..._tallest_woman

[snopes]

Guinness World Records has returned the title of world's tallest man to China's Bao Xishun after Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk refused to be measured under new guidelines.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080820/...llest_title_dc

[NayShel]

Along the same lines, I watched an interesting story on ABC's Medical Mysteries show last night about a 12 year old boy who's already 7 feet tall.

Link

[Mad Jay]

Guinness has also crowned a new shortest man under the new rules -- He Ping Ping, who stands 2 feet 5.37 inches (74.61 centimeters) tall and lives just a few hundred miles from Bao in Inner Mongolia, Glenday said.

WTF are the Chinese eating?

[tinfoil hat on]
Is the CHinese goverment doing some sort of genetic experiments in Inner Mongolia?
[/tinfoil hat off]

[snopes]

Sandy Allen: superhero. That is how I perceived the world’s tallest woman, 7 feet 7 1/4 inches, from my vantage point as the tallest little girl in Delmar, N.Y. Ms. Allen, who died last week at the age of 53, appeared invincible in her photograph in the Guinness Book of World Records. I imagined her wearing a red cape all the time, printed with the slogan, “The weather up here is fabulous.” She must have been madly popular.

But when I drove to Shelbyville, Ind., to interview her, I found her alone in a claustrophobic convalescence-home room, made smaller by her 8-foot-long bed. She lived down the road from her childhood home, on $54 a month in discretionary income.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22cohen.html

[snopes]

Seventh-grader Brenden Adams has an abnormality of the 12th chromosome that's caused his bones, teeth and organs to grow at a phenomenal pace.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...renden22m.html

[Syllavus]

I recall reading a web article about this boy last month or so. It's worrisome that his growth may not be able to be brought under control. So many people with different forms of giantism die young and I hope that's not going to be the case for him.

Interesting though that he truly might be the only person in the world to have this specific anomaly in his chromosomes.

[RivkahChaya]

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/ says Stadnik's BMI is 30.3, which makes him a little chubby, but not obese, IIRC. Assuming it's accurate for people that tall.

Oh, and the tall kid may be the only known living case with that chromosomal abnormality, but it may just be that most fetuses with it don't survive to delivery.

[Eddylizard]

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

WTF are the Chinese eating?

Melamine laced milk based products.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by Elkhound

He also has a specially made bike.

Originally Posted by Furienna

Wow, that IS a large man!

He also looks vaguely like a giant version of Dara, which is a bit scary. Well, not that much like him, but enough that I thought of it. Perhaps it's the jacket. My photo of Dara is a few years old, too.

[Furienna]

Originally Posted by Syllavus

I recall reading a web article about this boy last month or so. It's worrisome that his growth may not be able to be brought under control. So many people with different forms of giantism die young and I hope that's not going to be the case for him.

Interesting though that he truly might be the only person in the world to have this specific anomaly in his chromosomes.

I find it hard to believe, that Brenden is the only one with this chromosome anomaly. I have Turner's syndrome (which means I only have one X chromosomes, when normal girls have two), so I know a lot about these things. My problem was the opposite, I didn't grow fast enough as a little girl. So when I was seven years old, I had to start taking hormone injections every night. When I was thirteen, I started taking hormone pills instead, and I still take one pill every day now, eleven years later. But since there are several girls and women around the world, who suffer from Turner's syndrome. (Only females can have Turner's syndrome, because a phoetus needs a Y chromosome to become male, and as I said earlier, we only have one sex chromosome, one X). There are also several people in the world, who suffer from Down's syndrome or Angelman's syndrome, which are two other chromosome anomalities. So why would Brenden be uniqe in his anomality? I think they should check other "giants" in the world, to see if they have it too, and give this anomality a name.

Here are some more facts about the three other anomalities, that I have mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelman_Syndrome

And I also start thinking about Brenden's children, if he would become a father one day. His children would have a 50 % chance of inheriting their father's erronous 12th chromosome and a 50 % chance of inheriting his healthy 12th chromosome. Unless of course their mother have the same anomality. Then their children would have a 75 % chance of getting it too.

[Furienna]

Originally Posted by Richard W

He also looks vaguely like a giant version of Dara, which is a bit scary. Well, not that much like him, but enough that I thought of it. Perhaps it's the jacket. My photo of Dara is a few years old, too.

Who's Dara?

[Syllavus]

I was basing that on what the article said, not my own conjecture:

As far as researchers know, Brenden is the only person in the world to grow so big and so quickly because of an inverted chromosome 12

If other people with giantism had been reported to exhibit the same symptoms as Brenden, I'm sure there would be some record of it. People with giantism generally don't go around being unknown by the scientific community, since they are fairly rare disorders, and the specifics of Brenden's unique condition seem like they would be fairly easy to recognize. Of course Brenden is still young so I'm sure they've not been researching his specific condition for very long, but I see no immediate reason to doubt their claims. Just because some chromosome abnormalities are more common, doesn't mean that this particular abnormality isn't exceptionally rare.

[Furienna]

Okay. I just thought it was a stretch to say he was the only one in the world with the disorder.