Baldness? UCLA's New Molecule Could Revolutionize Hair Growth (opens in new tab)

People always say that working on hair growth is vanity and that there are more pressing issues to work on but I disagree.

Burn victims would like to have smooth skin with hair on it. Now I know this specific treatment probably won't help burn victims, but research on hair growth in general does.

Ultimately medicine is working towards a fountain of youth and if R&D can develop a revenue source from people who want their hair to grow back it's a means to further fund that quest for the fountain of youth and a reduction in human suffering.

It's not like people who buy toupees or hair transplants were going to otherwise spend their money on donations for burn victims.

It’s wild to me that hair regrowth could be considered an unworthy goal, when hundreds of millions of people will get an enormous boost to their well-being and all kinds of psych issues. It may actually be more effective a depression treatment than a good portion of anti-depressants.

I think this is a bit of an unfair comparison

We could say better hair leads to better self expression, confidence, etc even if we say its purely an ego/vanity source (which i’d argue, isn’t necessarily the case but for sake of argument lets say it is)

Ad placement algorithms don’t lead to a person’s well being increasing, outside shareholders/business owners which is tied to monetary gain.

perhaps you could say better ad placement for XYZ ad that promotes ABC net positive outcome means the work is positive, but i don’t see the inverse case with hair growth research that has high a magnitude of net negative outcomes on society as ad placement may have beyond:

1. Everyone gets better hair, so a lack of hair means societal pressure to conform

2. The treatment/therapy is patented, and prohibitively expensive where only the elite income brackets can afford it

To say more concisely, theres much more potential for an ad placement algorithm that hyper performs to be net negative on society than a hair treatment that hyper performs to be a net negative on society

But how else do they get the cure to the market?

(Provided it works, there are several such announcements every year but the actual progress is mediocre.)

People like to pretend that baldness is just about men being vain, but in reality, it causes serious mental health problem. If you want to be a feminist ally, find the cure for baldness. Watch the incel population go down 90%. And women will be extremely happy with the lack of baldness in males.

Let me take a guess. You aren't bald, are you?

God forbid men catch a break.

My wife just finished cancer treatment and has been fighting hair loss the whole time. It's coming back very slowly and it's thin. Losing your hair isn't a men only problem.

My (biological, born female) wife has androgenic alopecia and not even the only woman I know who suffers from it. It's not that rare in women, just less common than in men.

As if quant trading is a better use of their time

Honestly...I blame the internet (overstimulation from games, porn, addictive scrolling).

News of this exact research has been reposted a couple of times and previous threads weren't nearly as bad as this one. Something changed.

It's probably because missing teeth affect your ability to eat, whereas baldness (primarily) affects your appearance.