Im going to weigh in one more time on this................................
If some company had been willing to make RU58841, and sell it for about thirty bucks a month for perhaps 2ml woth of it, put it in a sprayer, and let you buy about three months worth of it at a time.................................................and especially if it was generic by now.
..........................then in my opinion there would be very little griping on hair forums. Men would be willing to use it (much more than finasteride), and it would have basically stopped further loss. So guys who got on it when they first started receeding would pretty much have the same hair for many, many, many years. There is no need for "regrowth" if you can stop the loss early enough.
spironolactone is something alot of men aren't going to fool with. RU was the potential "bomb" for hairloss in my opinion.
If RU had debuted, there would be not alternative theories going on about hairloss. Cloning research would probably have been primarily done to lower hairlines on folks who had super high hairlines and to give hair back to men who had already lost too much hair.
Theoretically speaking a super topical receptor blocker (especially if one could add something topically that did in fact inhibit alpha five also with no systemic effect) would have been all men would have needed. Until we have one, men will have to combine some growth stimulant unless they are willing to do the finas and spironolactone together to hold the line.
That little French company, in my opinion, could have stopped all the alternate theories if they would have just made that drug. I really think the ability of it to more-or-less halt further baldness would have been that good. Its a shame.