Hair Loss Conspiracy Theories

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On a number of less reputable websites, I have frequently come across conspiracy theories about hair loss. Some make absolutely no sense (such as the one that claims some shampoos cause hair loss but the manufacturers won't admit it - yeah, because everyone being bald is great for business and there's no need to change the formula!) and others are just illogical (a hair transplant surgeon/pharmaceutical company has a cure for baldness but won't release it because they're making too much money.

I think this negativity distracts us from the real villains in the hair loss industry. This includes the super villains, who sell those awful e-books for about $30 which tell you to put olive oil/lemon juice/crap on your head; the minor villains, who sell things to 'unclog your pores' or 'strand by strand' hair replacement and dodgy laser procedures; the well meaning idiots who sell all natural solutions that make your remaining hair smell funny and the 'market fillers' who sell things that probably work to some extent, but contribute to stopping hair loss in the same way that a single sand bag stops a flood. They are market fillers because they sell combinations of natural remedies such as saw palmetto and nettle root which are cheaper than buying the supplements separately, and therefore fill the demand in the market. There are other odd villains, like hair transplant surgeons who would be better spending their time laying turf too.

Picking on good hair transplant surgeons and pharmaceutical companies is just plain wrong though. I'll run through the basic conspiracy against the likes of Glaxo.

Apparently, they make so much money on Propecia, that if an effective cure was released, they'd stop making that money. Uh, right. For this argument to ring true, Propecia would have to be a damn sight more useful than it actually is. It would also have to be useless to treat BPH. Neither of these happen to be the case.

Propecia has been a commercial diappointment. Most men (maybe as many as 90%) continue to go bald naturally, because they're too embarrassed to use a hair loss drug that at best normally retains the remaining hair for up to a decade. Nor do they want to spend money for disappointing results. It just looks desperate (it takes confidence to admit your desperate, I have no shame!). Propecia is far more useful at fighting BPH and the company covers its costs doing that.

If a company like Glaxo created a drug that actually completely reversed balding or stopped balding at it's current state, they'd sell it. They'd sell it because they'd known men would pay shed loads of cash for it. Even better, sold at a decent affordable price, almost every balding man would buy it. Their customer base would rise significantly.

Besides which, Glaxo are far more interested in exploiting the exploitable in developing nations; well educated markets of people with lots of legal rights are harder to exploit.

The same must be said for hair transplant surgeons. Even if transplants became obsolete tomorrow, these guys are medical doctors. Hell, it's in the public interest for them to go out of the hair loss business because there's a global shortage of medical professionals! I'm sure many transplant surgeons would happily move into another field if hair loss was eradicated. And if one of them discovers the cure, they will be very rich indeed - do you really think they'll withhold it from their clients for the benefit of their competitors? What sort of business model is that?

Anyway, rant on conspiracy theories over.