The 16 year old baby.

Narrated by Stephanie Racine, this documentary focuses on the life of Brooke Greenberg, a 16-year-old girl from Baltimore who is the size and weight of an 11-month-old infant. Brooke stopped growing and ageing when she was five. She now weighs 17lbs and is 30 inches long. Her condition, believed to be genetic, is so rare that doctors have labelled it Syndrome X. The 16-year-old Baby draws on the extensive home video and photographic archive kept by the Greenberg family. The film follows them as they go about their daily lives with school and doctors’ appointments for Brooke, cake baking, tennis and college for their other daughters. Brooke has a complex medical history including pulmonary and digestive problems, seizures and stroke. Experts believe that a mutated gene prevents her from ageing. Florida gerontologist Dr Richard Walker, working with geneticists at the University of South Florida, hopes that by studying Brooke’s DNA he will be able to isolate the developmental gene that causes ageing. Brooke’s genome appeared completely normal in preliminary tests, necessitating ongoing research.