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Why does balding (male pattern baldness) seem to attract so many oddball theories about its causes and etiology? There's the recent thread about how "skull expansion" supposedly causes hair loss, and then there's Ernie Primeau's childish rantings about how body-hair steals nutrients before they can get to the scalp; and then there's Stephen Foote's curious idea that balding is caused by "pressure" on the hair follicles from a build-up of fluid (edema) in the scalp.
Not to belabor this issue too much, but years ago I asked Stephen why it is that even when you surgically remove hair follicles from the scalp and grow them in vitro, they show the same predictable response to androgens that they do when they're still on the scalp: the androgens suppress their growth. Why would they do that, since there's no "edema" in a Petri dish to hinder the hair follicles? Stephen's lame explanation for that phenomenon is that the pressure from the edema somehow PERMANENTLY alters the way they respond to androgens, so their growth is stunted that way, even after you remove them from the scalp and grow them in vitro.
Stephen has told me in the past that he would be a lot more accepting of the "Standard Theory" of balding if we could transplant hair follicles from the scalp to another location on the body BEFORE they started balding, and then see if they did indeed eventually start going bald at a later date. But unfortunately, I don't think such an interesting experiment is ever going to be done, at least on humans, because it would be unethical. I can't conceive of such an experiment ever being done on, say, a prepubertal boy who comes from a family with a strong history of balding. It would be nice to shut Stephen up once and for all, but they're just not going to do such an invasive experiment on a child or adolescent, just for the benefit of science.
But recently I came across an old study in which this experiment _was_ performed; not in humans, but in stumptailed macaques: "Studies of Common Baldness of the Stump-Tailed Macaque (Macaca speciosa)", Takashima et al, Arch Dermatol Vol. 103, May 1971. They took young monkeys, and exchanged graphs from the normally balding front with ones from the normally non-balding occipital area. Then they started giving the animals testosterone injections. Yes, what happened is exactly what all of us (with the exception of Stephen Foote) would expect to happen: the follicles transplanted onto the frontal scalp (which came from the rear) continued to grow hair just fine; but the follicles transplanted onto the rear scalp (which came from the frontal area, which normally starts to go bald after puberty) started to thin and go bald!! :woot:
So the experiment with the monkeys meets the same stipulations Stephen demanded for him to believe the Standard Theory of balding! Will he be man enough to admit that his own theory of balding is wrong?
Not to belabor this issue too much, but years ago I asked Stephen why it is that even when you surgically remove hair follicles from the scalp and grow them in vitro, they show the same predictable response to androgens that they do when they're still on the scalp: the androgens suppress their growth. Why would they do that, since there's no "edema" in a Petri dish to hinder the hair follicles? Stephen's lame explanation for that phenomenon is that the pressure from the edema somehow PERMANENTLY alters the way they respond to androgens, so their growth is stunted that way, even after you remove them from the scalp and grow them in vitro.
Stephen has told me in the past that he would be a lot more accepting of the "Standard Theory" of balding if we could transplant hair follicles from the scalp to another location on the body BEFORE they started balding, and then see if they did indeed eventually start going bald at a later date. But unfortunately, I don't think such an interesting experiment is ever going to be done, at least on humans, because it would be unethical. I can't conceive of such an experiment ever being done on, say, a prepubertal boy who comes from a family with a strong history of balding. It would be nice to shut Stephen up once and for all, but they're just not going to do such an invasive experiment on a child or adolescent, just for the benefit of science.
But recently I came across an old study in which this experiment _was_ performed; not in humans, but in stumptailed macaques: "Studies of Common Baldness of the Stump-Tailed Macaque (Macaca speciosa)", Takashima et al, Arch Dermatol Vol. 103, May 1971. They took young monkeys, and exchanged graphs from the normally balding front with ones from the normally non-balding occipital area. Then they started giving the animals testosterone injections. Yes, what happened is exactly what all of us (with the exception of Stephen Foote) would expect to happen: the follicles transplanted onto the frontal scalp (which came from the rear) continued to grow hair just fine; but the follicles transplanted onto the rear scalp (which came from the frontal area, which normally starts to go bald after puberty) started to thin and go bald!! :woot:
So the experiment with the monkeys meets the same stipulations Stephen demanded for him to believe the Standard Theory of balding! Will he be man enough to admit that his own theory of balding is wrong?
