6 ms·

I think we'll have sustainable cold fusion before we find the cure to baldness. As a bald man I can say this: I'd much rather every second of thought, ever penn

• arberx 4y ago
  Solving balding will open the door to solving many genetic problems, deepening our understanding of our cells, hormones, etc.
  • giraffe_lady 4y ago
    • stuckinhell 4y ago
      I don't think this needs to be an exclusive or situation. Baldness affects ALOT of men, and their loved ones. A cure for baldness doesn't mean no one is researching breast cancer. If my husband could get a cure for baldness, I'd be thrilled.
      • throwaway743 4y ago
        Not just men, but to a lesser degree, women too. It'd also be great if a solution were to be developed for those with alopecia or going through chemo. It could do wonders for those folks struggling with such health issues.
        • piva00 4y ago
          And on top of that the effects of balding on women's mental health are even rougher than for men.
          • sidewndr46 4y ago
            Do you have a source for this?
            • piva00 4y ago
              https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5986111/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5986111/ > Conclusion > Alopecia has been shown in multiple studies to have a psychosocial impact in both men and women; however, the impact may be more severe and devastating in women. The psychological burden of hair loss in women is significant and should not be overlooked.
              • indymike 4y ago
                This is really an indictment of the social value we put on appearance. We care way too much. This needs to change.
    • eska 4y ago
      Sooo what terminal disease are you currently trying to cure?
      • giraffe_lady 4y ago
        prisons
    • ericmay 4y ago
      > affects people beyond their ego & surface-level masculinity. While I'm balding and it no longer bothers me, it used to bother me quite a bit and while maybe I should have just "gotten over it", it had a very adverse affect on my mental well being for a number of years when I was a little younger. Truthfully it still bothers me when I look in the mirror, just not as much anxiety about it. Since you are (based on your user name) not someone who is experiencing or likely to experience balding, I'd ask you to consider not being so aggressive and insensitive with your comments here. > In fact if we did consider this, as we should, gender-affirming care, would it have the same support and defense it tends to? Many other gender-affirming techniques have and could lead to advances with wider applications, why are we so fixated on this one. It's questionable whether this is "gender-affirming care", or whether that even matters. It's disappointing that you're grandstanding on this issue when research into one area does not preclude research into another area. Likely, since so many men are balding and do not want to, they'd be willing to pay money for this elective and optional treatment which could then go on to fund additional research in other, more important areas. If scientists and researchers can figure out how to control hair growth, this could also help women who are affected by conditions such as alopecia, burn victims, cancer patients, and many others. This can help people who are seeking gender-affirming care (MtF, FtM, etc.) who want to grow a beard (or not) or MtF who want a full head of beautiful hair so they can be who they want to be.
    • SantalBlush 4y ago
      >So would solving any other problem that actually affects people beyond their ego & surface-level masculinity. What a hostile and clueless take. Many women also struggle with baldness.
    • elliekelly 4y ago
      Many women suffer from hair loss, too. And, no matter your gender, a bald head can be uncomfortable beyond just the social implications. A bald head gets cold very quickly and just a little bit of sun can cause quite a lot of pain.
      • throwaway5959 4y ago
      • MegaDeKay 4y ago
        So much this. My hair thinned out and I shaved my head. I think I look fine, but I'd jump at the chance to get my hair back so I'm not cold all the time. Wearing a hat or a toque all the time looks worst of all.
    • MisterBastahrd 4y ago
      Well, maybe the people who desire gender affirming care should just get in line and get over it, like you seem to be wanting the population of balding people to do. Which, I might add, is not limited to men and their "ego and surface level masculinity." There are plenty of scientific reasons to pursue a cure for balding that have nothing to do with aesthetics.
  • nerbert 4y ago
    Wasn't aware that baldness was a problem.
    • edge17 4y ago
      Whatever it is, problem or not, it's a huge market.
    • mywittyname 4y ago
      It effects like 2/3s of men by age 35 and about 1/2 of women by age 55.
    • jjoonathan 4y ago
      Bald man here: I got clued in when I accidentally started A/B testing with a baseball cap. It was strange, every so often I would have a day where people were noticeably warmer on average. They would laugh at my jokes, they would help carry a conversation, they would let me have the stage in a group discussion without pushing in -- it was amazing. This only happened every so often, and I chalked it up to luck and chance and some days just being better than others. On one of these good days, I was busy regaling my enraptured audience with a tale about a covey of quail we were raising when I got an itch on my head. I lifted my hat to scratch and a wave of revulsion washed over people's faces. Instantly, they lost interest, glanced away, and looked generally uncomfortable. Someone even coughed. I stumbled but kept going, however it was clear that the story was now unwelcome so I abortively wrapped it up. I made a few attempts to restart conversation but got the "good day" responses were gone, I got only the typical lukewarm responses. I went to the restroom to look for something on my head that might have caused the reaction, but it took me some time staring in the mirror and searching until I found the culprit. Peoples' enthusiasm didn't return until the next day, when I ran the test again, this time intentionally, but with the same result. It was reproducible. "Good days" happened when I covered my thinning hairline. To be clear, these people included both men and women and they had known me for years. On a conscious level, they knew exactly what I looked like and that I was balding. On a subconscious level, though, they treated me very differently depending on whether or not they had recently seen my hairline at its worst. Once I started paying attention, I realized that this behavior was universal, and a bit of introspection revealed that the exact same instincts were active in my own mind. Appearances matter! Incidentally, I've found that women tend to be much more understanding as they often have had similar A/B experiences with makeup, while men will often just chalk my observations up to confidence, reversing cause and effect.
  • bamboozled 4y ago
    So would solving cancer, so why start at baldness ?
    • jjoonathan 4y ago
      Sure, why not run a marathon instead of taking a first step? There are thousands of steps in a marathon, it's literally thousands of times better, so why not do it instead?
    • culi 4y ago
      There's only one scientist in the world and we have to collectively decide what she focuses on... Is that how it works?
      • bequanna 4y ago
        I prefer to think of the scientists working on solving balding as Larry David or George Constanza-types. Bitter about their hair loss, kept going by the promise of a better life in the future through hair.
        • thedailymail 4y ago
          There's a baldness research team at the institute I work at. The head of the lab looks like a talk show host from the 1980s, and his work is derided by other labs. But he brings in more external funding than any other group, I don't think of him as a lonely crusader.
    • seydor 4y ago
      True, we could also prolong erections...
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • sib301 4y ago
      Because we as a species can multi-task. Many billions of dollars are spent on cancer research every year by the NIH alone. Imagine if we did all our research as a species in series as opposed to in parallel.
• scythe 4y ago
  >I think we'll have sustainable cold fusion before I'm pretty sure that the Sun will destroy the Earth before we get cold fusion, because the latter is literally impossible. >be directed towards say, solving Basic science is a thing. Hair is part of skin, and understanding how hair works is part of understanding how skin works. Both existing treatments for baldness (finasteride and minoxidil) were originally treatments for other conditions repurposed for hair loss. Bald men face a higher risk of skin cancer as well, which is hardly trivial: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.30395 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.30395 >Being bald has not stopped me So the funny thing about the baldness discussion is that we always talk about treating male-pattern baldness as a thing that primarily affects men's experience of life. But, in practice, women often choose to date men with hair in preference to men who are bald. By revealed preferences, we infer that women experience some kind of perceptual pleasure related to having a partner with hair. This is very rarely considered a meaningful endpoint.
• danaris 4y ago
  This perpetuates the fallacy that all "scientific effort" is in some way fungible, and if you took scientists off one project, you could just put them on another one without any friction or loss of effectiveness. That makes about as much sense as suggesting you could take me, a PHP developer, off the project I'm on now, throw me onto a team developing embedded OSes for medical devices, and have me just pick right up and be fully productive on day 1. It also presupposes that as long as there is even one important hard problem out there, we should simply ignore all the less-important problems and throw all our resources at the most important one, which is also both unrealistic and fairly unhelpful.
  • indymike 4y ago
    Nah, it's just saying there might be more important fish to fry that fixing my broken mop.
    • RobertWHurst 4y ago
      Nah, you just don't get the point. There are trillions of people millions at least of which are solving civilizations problems right now. This idea that you can simply take a person with very specific knowledge off a problem set at resign them to another is ridiculous. There wouldn't even be a benefit given that most problems are solved by experts that have dedicated their life to a problem. Adding new people from other disciplines or projects - they would spend their time most likely covering already covered ground. There are enough people in the world to work on more than the dozen problems or so you can list of in your head.
      • indymike 4y ago
        If we had "trillions of people" living on earth we'd have a whole new set of problems, all of which would be much more urgent and important than solving the mystery of why my hair abandoned me at age 28.
• 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  i think those things are not really comparable in terms of funding/difficulties to solve. there are so many positive outcomes that can come from this research, like regenerative cures. and this would also help women who suffer from alopecia, it must be much worse for them as they can't use anti-androgens like propecia for men.
• Akronymus 4y ago
  As someone who is not bald, I actually kinda want to be, simply because I find hair to be an unnecessary chore.
  • _jmx6 4y ago
    $20 Norelco trimmer and you can join the club any day of the week, my man. The only thing I hated about losing hair was the transition period where you're uncertain about whether it's really happening, at what rate, and what to do about it; but, once that decision is made - it's nothing but relief and I'm at peace with the size-1 permastubble. As a bonus, one tiny frown and no one talks to you, so that's an unexpected benefit. Even if a 'cure' comes out, I wouldn't touch it because vanity is a young man's game. But if we gain some deeper medical or biological understanding from this, all the better.
    • bluedino 4y ago
      Just use your favorite discount razor that comes in the mail via subscription
  • t-3 4y ago
    Shaving the head isn't actually that much work, ~5 min per day (if you do it daily). Feels a lot less strenuous than trimming every week or two, even though it's probably a bit more time spent overall.
  • NullPrefix 4y ago
    You would still have to cut hair because balding is usually in spot patterns, not all over at once
• dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  Listen baldy, I deeply respect your good intent, but you see the world does not reward men who can solve the worlds real problems. Solve a cosmetic problem and you will be way richer AND happier. Heck even some kind of permanent wig inventor will be richer than a cure for cancer.
• niknoble 4y ago
  Agreed. Baldness is not even remotely a serious problem, if it's a problem at all. However, it's interesting because: - It seems easy compared to other medical problems - There's a ton of money on the line for whoever solves it - It still hasn't been solved These things together don't inspire a lot of confidence in people who say we are close to curing aging, cancer, mental illness, chronic pain, etc. It almost feels like we are living before the dawn of medical science.
• fpdavis 4y ago
  We have enough people, money, and resources to do all these things all at once.
• hendersoon 4y ago
  I always figured we'd have antigravity before we discovered a weight-loss drug that actually works without any debilitating side effects, but here we are, science found the GLP-1 pathway in their efforts to discover a new diabetes therapy and suddenly real, no BS weight loss drugs are a thing that exists, with many competitors popping up in only two years. We're already at the second-generation of these drugs! Point is that progress always seems hopelessly stalled for what feels like forever and then one day the clouds open up, and the sun shines through. That's how it goes.