Wang Junming is 25 years old. He is 66 centimeters tall. His face has adult bags and wrinkles, but his body never grew beyond the size of a newborn baby.
In China’s Hunan province, his family simply calls him “the baby”. He goes to sleep before eight at night, has the IQ of a child, and depends entirely on his 21-year-old sister Xiaoling, who carries him in her arms as if time had never passed.
After going viral on social media, doctors at Xiangya Hospital in Changsha finally diagnosed him. Pituitary hormone deficiency, a condition that is normally detected before the age of three. Endocrinologist Deng Chao identified a mutation in the POU1F1 gene and explained that there are only 114 documented cases like his in the world. The family, who lived on $450 a month from the father’s work as a bricklayer, had abandoned treatment for lack of resources. His superstitious mother believed it was fate and decided to care for him for life without seeking a cure.
Now Wang is receiving hormone therapy, although not even the doctor knows whether his bones will hold up if his body starts to grow after two decades frozen in time.
