Further Follicept civil conversation

[efedrez]

P

I did apply treatment last night and nothing out of the ordinary occurred. I certainly did not shed hairs at the ra" j'ai la peau douce...!"te I did the treatment prior nor did I experience the itch. Granted, I still did lose hair, but mostly due to the stickiness of the gel and it catching hair I presume were already dying. But again, nothing like the hair that was coming down a few days prior.

To be honest, if this does make it to market and people use it in areas where there is actually hair, then be prepared for it to look like utter sh*t. This is a PM application only IMHO. I hate using gel anyway, but I can assure you this won't do any favors in the appearance of thickness.

I'm not expecting much from this in all honesty at this point and from what I've been seeing on the other subjects, but it is still early, especially for me. Also, as long as it doesn't make my hair worse I'll be continuing until my last 12th dose. Trial and error I guess, but I do appreciate how open Devon and Dr. Hsu have been throughout the short period of my trial. They have a theory and are trying to run with it right now....time will tell if their theory has any real substance, but I respect what they are trying to do.

Chat soon fellas'

Great to hear you are not experiencing further crazy shedding and decided to continue with the trial
Are you going to publish pictures? There has been some controversy with the ones taken by follicept so it would be nice if you could try to keep the same angle and lighting if you take some
Be prepared for criticism no matter how well your pictures are taken but try not to pay too much attention to it. Most of us are grateful for having someone from the forum in the trail

[Thinning@30]

Why is everyone being so negative and disrespectful? Does anyone still believe that follicept is a scam? If not, then why all this negativity? It sounds almost like you guys wish they fail. Weird.

I've been skeptical of Follicept, but I would love to be wrong about them. So far, they've done a number of things that make it difficult to take them seriously. They made bold claims regarding effectiveness that so far haven't been born out by their informal trial. If they didn't start out with bold claims and just said they didn't know if it would work, but literature indicated it might and the mouse results were promising, I think most people here would have welcomed the openness and the chance to have a dialog with a company researching a hair loss treatment.

Their current trial is informal, but they still don't seem to be going about it in a very methodical way. It could be growing vellus hair or not, but how is anyone supposed to know? That combined with the hype makes it hard to believe they're just going to close up or go back to the drawing board if the informal trial doesn't show results. Plus, their website already talks about a timeline for selling the product.

They're also actively trying to get people to vote for them for some type of startup award, when they haven't even demonstrated results yet. It's like we're being used.

[FrenchNewbie]

Where are the photos StayThick? Are you kidding us? No photo on week 0! It seems you just took your Follicept for free and post a photo of your sink as a "proof" of a shedding. Big joke.

Please post your first photos as you promised. You were an opponent of Follicept first. Then Devon opened his door. Dr. Hsu does the same thing. You've publicly change your mind. And you are posting nothing. Hey man, you were speaking about a lot of photos... we have nothing. And we will wait what? We need the week 0 to date a possible progression by ourselves. You will not come on week 7 to say: "this photo was on week 0", no one will trust you.

PS: And i add one thing. I think you took a product before Follicept. You don't say it. It's a shame. You live a shedding cause of this product (maybe Minox, or Fin). I personnally think you are a lier.

[Hemo]

Where are the photos StayThick? Are you kidding us? No photo on week 0! It seems you just took your Follicept for free and post a photo of your sink as a "proof" of a shedding. Big joke.

Please post your first photos as you promised. You were an opponent of Follicept first. Then Devon opened his door. Dr. Hsu does the same thing. You've publicly change your mind. And you are posting nothing. Hey man, you were speaking about a lot of photos... we have nothing. And we will wait what? We need the week 0 to date a possible progression by ourselves. You will not come on week 7 to say: "this photo was on week 0", no one will trust you.

PS: And i add one thing. I think you took a product before Follicept. You don't say it. It's a shame. You live a shedding cause of this product (maybe Minox, or Fin). I personnally think you are a lier.

As much of a joke as their trial is, FrenchNewbie's correct - you agreed to be a part of the trial but continue to avoid posting pics. What's the issue?

[bananana]

Why is everyone being so negative and disrespectful? Does anyone still believe that follicept is a scam? If not, then why all this negativity? It sounds almost like you guys wish they fail. Weird.

Personally, I wish this works, but I think the chances are slim. But one thing I do want for sure is that if it does fail, that they continue and try different doses, different drugs, and just keep trying. Does anyone not want that? Everyone cries about how no one cares about hairloss, how no companies are doing anything. But when someone does, and updates us on it, everyone just craps all over it. Like complaining about how "amateurish" their trial is. It's an unofficial trial for family and friends, and they said they want to see terminal hairs. How hard is that to understand? I for one don't want to wait for an official clinical trial for god knows how many years before we even know if it works or not.

Sometimes I feel like some of us let this hairloss get to us too much. If you want to complain, complain about all the other companies and scientists that are doing nothing, or the people that are actively scamming people.

+2 (my dog barked)

[champpy]

The only thing I think Follicept can take any blame for is the overhyping of a product that was only being demonstrated on a rat. My theory as two why the rat model is worthless is this.
These rats were breed for the sole purposed of being hairless. These rats do not have MPB. The action by which we lose our hair, MPB, must be totally different than a species who was modified to be hairless. There are so many different pathways and deficiencies that go into MPB that the hairless rat cannot ever represent.

Why we are looking for cures for MPB in rats is beyond me. Its two totally different situations we have going on here.
Rats should only be used to test the safety of a drug. That's it. If it is tested and if found to be safe, then move on to real human test subjects and we will see the results or lack thereof with them.

Until the rat has 100% male pattern baldness (which I believe some primates do), then we should not test the product performance on rats anymore. All it does is get our hopes up until the human trial begins and we quickly realize that it never works on humans because humans and mice don't have the same condition

[Keki]

To be honest there are some study with human cultivated hair follicle, so it's not that all we have is some rats pics

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3283847/
(i think this is the study where they took the 12 days mark)

I don't trust koreans anyway, do you remember the pumpkin seeds crap? There are even some video on youtube about that study, with patients that say bullshits over and over

[Swooping]

To be honest there are some study with human cultivated hair follicle, so it's not that all we have is some rats pics

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3283847/
(i think this is the study where they took the 12 days mark)

I don't trust koreans anyway, do you remember the pumpkin seeds crap? There are even some video on youtube about that study, with patients that say bullshits over and over

That organ culture model proves nothing in relation to androgenetic alopecia. You really never get it do you?

Anyways, bravo for seeing that rodents are not a good model for androgenetic alopecia, also bravo for seeing that bias can be present in studies!

[SOTF]

Is there any area of medical research that has as many jokers and scam artists as the field of hair regeneration? I am amazed each time I browse these forums. It is truly a sad state of affairs.

[serenemoon]

Where are the photos StayThick? Are you kidding us? No photo on week 0! It seems you just took your Follicept for free and post a photo of your sink as a "proof" of a shedding. Big joke.

Please post your first photos as you promised. You were an opponent of Follicept first. Then Devon opened his door. Dr. Hsu does the same thing. You've publicly change your mind. And you are posting nothing. Hey man, you were speaking about a lot of photos... we have nothing. And we will wait what? We need the week 0 to date a possible progression by ourselves. You will not come on week 7 to say: "this photo was on week 0", no one will trust you.

PS: And i add one thing. I think you took a product before Follicept. You don't say it. It's a shame. You live a shedding cause of this product (maybe Minox, or Fin). I personnally think you are a lier.

It is not fair to accuse him of lying about using minox/fin recently. If that is his reaction, then that is his truth. He stated before that he has not used a product in a long time, so let us respect him and respect his journey with Follicept, instead of accusing him of lies. It is as bad as accusing Follicept of lying/scamming. People will react to Follicept differently, so we have to be mature enough to accept that, instead of insulting/accusing them.