I've heard many people say De Vito is a dwarf and many others say he isn't. Once and for all, is he or not???

Answer 1

This is a very good question, and one that I have searched the internet and found answered incorrectly far too often. The answer to your question is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’, (and ultimately ‘no’), but I will explain why. The first thing you need to understand is that dwarfism is a concept invented by man. Naturally, of course, there is a genetic correlate for dwarfism, however, we have invented the cut-off, meaning nature doesn’t necessarily work within the categories we have stipulated. This is much like psychiatry, where Dr. Kraepelin came up with a diagnostics classificatory system that employs time-specified cut-offs to ascertain whether medical symptoms are chronic or acute, rendering a person as suffering from psychiatric illness in the former, and not in the latter. Like every other system in which man has attempted to map nature’s diversity onto a systemic classificatory system, classifying dwarfism (much like diagnosing a psychiatric condition) is therefore not an exact science. Science in general and medicine specifically is in fact about medians and ‘most-of-the-time’ situations. Conceptualise this as a set of programmes written to work on DOS operating systems but with patches for MAC too; so you have a situation where all programmes work on platform (nature) and one where some glitches may arise because, as we both know, cracks are never perfect (manmade). Therefore, in transcribing what occurs in nature to our classifiable terms, we lose out and exceptions arise. De Vito is an exception. From a technical point of view, it is medically accurate to state that, barring any other disorder, men shorter than 4’10” and women shorter than 4’7” suffer from dwarfism. Based on that, De Vito is a dwarf. However, what is dwarfism? Without getting too technical, dwarfism is a hormonal disorder related to low amounts of human growth hormone. Several people think suffering from dwarfism entails being disproportionate, namely, having a normal sized head but short limbs and torso. This is, quite simply, entirely untrue. Dwarfs may be proportionate, and De Vito certainly is. However, having said that, De Vito does not suffer from any hormonal deficiency. This means that he does not suffer from Dwarfism. Clearly, as you can see, by both methods of exclusion, he is both a dwarf and not a dwarf, clearly illustrating how our classificatory system stands to fail at times, and De Vito’s case is one of them. Strictly speaking, interpreting this failure with some common sense would show that in the case of multiple criteria for dwarfism (height, hormonal deficiency), a criterion may have more weighting than another, and certainly, where dwarfism is concerned, the hormonal component cannot be overlooked. The answer to your question, therefore, is that although De Vito is short enough to be a dwarf, he does not possess the indelible genetic composition of a dwarf, and therefore is not really one. In other words, he is a very short man who compares in size to dwarfs, without having their genetic constitution. The extent of his shortness satisfies one of the criteria, alas, the most essential component of dwarfism is not present.

Answer 2

He's just short. Dwarfs have certain characteristics and De Vito doesn't.

Answer 3

Well actually it may look like he is but he is not Dwarfs tends to be a bit smaller then him, Dwarfs are more on the 4'6 and no higher. although he may be consider as a little man

Answer 4

IMDB lists him as 5' exactly. If this is true, then he is not a dwarf by any criterion.

Answer 5

No. He's just very short. I've seen pictures of his kids and they're normal.

Answer 6

No, Danny DeVito is not a dwarf.

Answer 7

Uh no he is just a short man.

Answer 8

He's just very short.

Answer 9

Technically, he's classed as a hobgoblin.

Answer 10

He is just really short.