Surgeon Bobby Ng Kin-wah is not too concerned about philosophical objections to his operations that make short people taller by lengthening their leg bones; he sees it as offering patients a new life.
'I understand it is controversial, some doctors do not like the idea,' he said. 'But I don't think we, normal people, should judge or decide for those with dwarfism whether they should have such treatment or not.
'We are not them. We can never understand the difficulties they face in daily life.'
An orthopaedic surgeon at Prince of Wales Hospital, Ng is one of a handful of local experts in a limb-lengthening treatment that can add 30cm to a person's height.
The procedure is painful and takes years to complete. During treatment, patients have to wear a circular frame with wires or screws piercing the muscle and attached to the bone. It works by slowly pulling the bone apart to encourage new growth of bone and soft tissue.
Between 1991 and this year, the hospital had almost 100 lengthening cases - 34 for people with achondroplasia, the genetic defect that leads to dwarfism, and 64 for people with other leg-length discrepancies.