Human hearts can now be replaced

[clandestine]

"Stem cells taken from the back of a human eye have restored some vision to blind rats"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17258098

[greatjob!]

Comparing baldness to blindness is a pretty absurd! Going bald sucks but come on...

[NotBelievingIt]

Comparing baldness to blindness is a pretty absurd! Going bald sucks but come on...

The point is that stem cell therapies are on the verge of radically changing how we perceive what we originally thought was unfixable issues.

If we can rebuild heart tissue, lung tissue, skin, eyes functionality...why is hair loss any different? Its clearly a "fault" in certain hairs...it should be relatively easy to figure out, at a stem cell level, why a hair millimeters away from another is completely different in its ability to survive DHT strangulation.

[greatjob!]

The point is that stem cell therapies are on the verge of radically changing how we perceive what we originally thought was unfixable issues.

If we can rebuild heart tissue, lung tissue, skin, eyes functionality...why is hair loss any different? Its clearly a "fault" in certain hairs...it should be relatively easy to figure out, at a stem cell level, why a hair millimeters away from another is completely different in its ability to survive DHT strangulation.

I know what the point was. I'm a biochemistry student I understand what's going on with regenerative medicine and the possibilities it brings for mpb, what I was referring to was the comment that baldness is as devastating as blindness. That is definitely absurd.

[clandestine]

My point remains; they are both necessarily detrimental to one's quality of life. They are similar in this respect.

In different ways, and to different extents, yes. Well, this is obvious, though.

But we've digressed. The point of this thread was, as per the first part of your post, to point out and discuss potential for regenerative medicine and stem cells today, and into the future.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

It has already been proven that certain stem cells, when implanted into other parts of the body, can "change track" and take on the properties and characteristics of the other stem cells that they are implanted around. For instance, in this article, thymus stem cells were implanted in the skin around hair follicles and those thymus stem cells "changed direction" and became functioning hair follicles. This should really be tried on humans, just not using thymus stem cells since I believe they're located near the heart. But this discovery really makes me think that if healthy stem cells from other places (maybe bone marrow) were injected into bare areas of the scalp, then maybe hair could be regrown. Here's the article that I'm referring to: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-cct081810.php

[BMD1]

Wouldn't kill you to exude a little optimism mate.

To refute, going blind isn't necessarily life-threatening, and could therefore be considered as 'not anything serious'. Yet there is an abundance of funding and research dedicated to curing ocular diseases.

Yes, perhaps being blind could be seen (pardon the pun) as something which is much more detrimental to one's quality of life comparably, but I could easily argue otherwise. Balding, while 'cosmetic' by definition, is necessarily traumatic in many ways itself, in some cases drastically reducing one's quality of life.

I'm sure most people would take a bald head over being blind.
Heart, eyes and alot more cases have huge funding. Baldness just isn't seen as a condition that requires this, so alot more conditions take priority.

I'd love for a cure to be made, I'm 23 and nearly bald, I have 0 self confidence.
But from what I've read i dont hold much hope.

[BMD1]

It's no good relying on a cure anyway, otherwise your mental state won't progress.
I need to accept it like all the other bald men around living a normal life.