A generation ago, many doctors prescribed estrogen to suppress the growth of girls destined to be over 6 feet tall. Far fewer do so today, says a survey published Tuesday.

But an advocacy group condemned any continuation of growth-suppression therapy, and petitioned the government to place a warning label on all estrogen products, branding its use potentially dangerous.

"My gripe is that nobody knows if it's safe or not," said Dr. Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Yet "kids have been treated since the 1950s. Why has there been no monitoring?" asked Barnard, a well-known estrogen critic.

Girls' increasing production of estrogen during puberty causes the skeleton to mature so that growth eventually stops. Giving them estrogen pills can speed up that bone maturation and suppress growth somewhat, by up to 2 inches.

It first was tried in 1956; by 1978, one survey suggested half of pediatric endocrinologists offered it to girls expected to be taller than 6-foot-1 as adults.

Typically, a very tall mother brought her daughter to a hormone specialist, saying she didn't want the child to face the social or psychological issues that she recalled because of height, said Dr. Joseph Sanfilippo of the University of Pittsburgh.

But being tall is not a disease, he noted. Over time, social values changed - supermodels often are over 6 feet tall. Consequently, "it's been years since I've had this request," Sanfilippo said.

Barnard surveyed 715 members of the nation's largest group of pediatric endocrinologists. Of the 411 doctors who responded, 22 percent had prescribed growth-suppressing estrogen for between one and five tall girls within five years.

That's a very small number of patients, said Dr. Janet Silverstein of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

But Barnard called it too high. His advocacy group filed a petition asking the Food and Drug Administration to place warning labels on all estrogen products, telling doctors and parents that the hormone has never been approved for such use and could be dangerous.

He cited a handful of women who think their adolescent estrogen therapy caused later cancer or fertility problems.

Barnard opposes estrogen therapy in general. His Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, best known for pushing vegetarian diets, opposes much use of animals in science. One major estrogen brand is derived from horse urine.

Although growth-suppressant patients in particular haven't been studied, "there is no evidence, to my knowledge, of early estrogen exposure and long-term consequences," said Sanfilippo, who edits the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology that printed Barnard's survey.

In fact, young girls seem to suffer no harm when given birth control pills for other reasons, such as irregular bleeding, that contain similar estrogen amounts, he said.

The FDA said it was concerned that girls could be exposed to untested treatments and will review the petition carefully, but "there is no reason ... to consider this an imminent danger."