Frivolous Biotech: Molecular Biology, Follicles and Wii

I'm a science geek. I don't just admit that, I'll proclaim it to whomever wants to listen. That includes putting the results of research to practical applications, and these days a lot of that goes on in the biotech industry. I'm more of a basic research guy myself, but unlike some hardcore sci-geeks, I in no way look down upon those who turn theory into technology. There are a lot of useful things coming from the people who do just that and there's a great deal of promise of more to come. At the same time, I think there should be a sense of priorities as to what issues are addressed. Some things deserve more, and more immediate, attention than others. Curing a few cancers, lupus, birth defects, and a whole range of genetically-based, debilitating or lethal disorders should be at the top of biotech's to-do list.

"Curing" baldness, not so much. I doubt that anyone has ever died as the result of hair loss. Applying the considerable weight of biological research to helping shallow people feel better about themselves just shouldn't be a priority. After all, there are already cosmetic procedures available for those who can't cope with a bit of follicular deficit syndrome, and you know what? Some of us look pretty damned good without strings of keratin sticking out of our heads. Nonetheless, there's money to be made and so some talented scientists are going about curing what isn't a disease instead of putting their efforts into taking on something worthwhile. As far as I'm concerned, these fellow eggheads need to stop goofing off and get back to work.

Biotech turns to hair-loss research

Biotechnology has introduced many wonders to the world. New drugs to treat deadly diseases. Microbes that digest oil spills. Fluorescent fish. Remarkable inventions all.

But what has biotech ever done for bald people?

Some may feel sheepish raising the question, given the weightier problems needing a scientific fix. Hair loss is not a life-threatening condition, concedes Kaiser Permanente dermatologist Paradi Mirmirani. But half the population, both male and female, see their locks thinning by age 50 - and many can't take the loss lightly, Mirmirani said.

"I have tearful patients in my office many times a day," she said. "When they lose their hair, they feel like they've lost their identity."

Well cry me a freakin' river! How about this for a cure; try basing your identity on more than your hairdo. If you're so shallow that your whole identity is tied to your hair, I have one thing to say to you. Life: You're doing it wrong.

That passionate attachment is helping to speed research on new treatments because investors see a potential gold mine in the field. Most health plans don't reimburse for anti-balding drugs or transplants, but many people will pay out of their own pockets even if the cost is a bit hair-raising.

Industry sources estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion a year on approved drugs for hair loss and hair transplants.

Yeah, that's great. A billion dollars could pretty much eradicate hunger in this country. Think of what it could do for education or any number of other problems. Look, I don't begrudge someone who has lost their hair as the result of real disease the privilege of restoring it, but the vast majority of people who are losing their hair aren't in that group. Aside from the pursuit of cold, hard currency, there's no reason at all to divert man hours away from research on real problems simply to satisfy the vanity of middle-aged men with receding hairlines. Go buy a Ferrari; the world should not turn on your midlife crisis!

That explains why a small but determined bunch of companies and academics are mining the hair shaft for clues to the molecular mechanisms of balding. They're throwing an arsenal of high-tech tools at the condition: genome studies, stem cell stimulation, gene therapy, a type of tissue engineering often called "hair cloning" and even robotics.

Just think of all the superficial crap we could make money from this way! No woman would ever need to be flat-chested again! All American males with the money to afford it could sprout foot-long schlongs for just 732 easy monthly payments of $19.95! Why, the Home Shopping Network will never be the same once we have the ability to turn the entire populace into Barbie and Ken clones! Big sale on perfect skin and genetically-engineered self-esteem this week! How does this not qualify as a frivolous, even stupid, application of a vital technology that ought to be saving lives instead of just helping a bunch of people with too much money and too little self-esteem feel like they have a chance at getting lucky again? Go join the Hair Club, for crying out loud, and get those researchers back to work on something other than assuaging your shriveled little egos!

For a minority of balding people, episodes of hair loss stem from diseases such as skin infections and immune system disorders, or stresses such as surgery and childbirth. Treatments for such hair loss are often geared to fix the underlying cause.

But by far the most common type of hair loss is the slow, inexorable thinning of the locks on a timetable set by genes inherited from the father or mother...

Only two drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat common baldness - Merck's Propecia and Johnson & Johnson's Rogaine (and its generic equivalent, minoxidil).

Propecia, a pill usually prescribed only for men, blocks production of DHT. The mechanism is not fully understood for Rogaine, an over-the-counter solution that is applied to the scalp.

Both drugs can promote regrowth or slow the rate of hair loss for some people, to some extent. But there's plenty of room for improvement.

I see. So we already have treatments for something that isn't even a disease in the first place. Why, then, should we need more of them? Hey you in the labcoat! Get back to work! Don't you have something important to do?

"There is clearly a great need for more treatments for hair growth," said Dr. Vera Price, a UCSF dermatology professor who heads the medical center's hair research center. "Pharmas, the biotech industry, venture capitalists are aware of this huge consumer need and the fact that it represents a multibillion-dollar market."

That there's a demand for something doesn't indicate a real need, just a real demand. Dr. Price, you're spouting nonsense, and most likely because you see grant dollars dancing before your eyes. There is a real need for sufficiently inexpensive enough food to feed the hungry, there's a need for biological remediation of environmental contaminants, there's a need to find treatments for crippling diseases. There's not a need to use molecular biology to treat a purely cosmetic condition and there never will be. Once the necessities are addressed we can afford the luxuries. Removing real human suffering is a necessity; having a full head of hair is a luxury for those that want it.

Some of us, by the way, would be very happy to have a pill we could pop to stop the stuff from growing back in. It's not a big deal, but it would be nice. We're not demanding that the biotech industry give us such a molecular miracle, though. A shaving razor suffices; cosmetic surgery should do the trick for those on the opposite end of the spectrum. Where, again, is this "huge consumer need?" I wonder if Dr. Price would see having a huge plasma television or the latest innovative crappy toy from Apple as necessities, too. That people camped outside of electronics shops all night long to be first in line for the new Wii doesn't make the thing a "need." It's still just a toy, and biotech research aimed at "curing" baldness is no different. How can anyone take a statement like Price's seriously? Oh, yeah, because there could be big bucks involved down the line.

Hair-transplant surgeons take follicles from the back and sides of the head, which seem immune to the balding effects of male hormones, and move them to the crown. The success of transplants has always been limited, however, by the finite amount of hair a patient still has left to move around.

Well heck, just take a graft from some dude's hairy backside and stick it on his head, then. Whatever. The point is, there are already drugs and surgery available for those who have lost their identity along with their hair. No doubt that these people will find themselves once again able to contribute to society when they're not spending every moment worried about sunburned scalps.

The article goes on to describe some of this research and names a few of the companies involved in it. One of them, Follica, Inc., is headquartered in Boston. I think that next time I'm in town, I'm going to stop by and pee in one of their potted plants or something. Well, maybe not. Still, maybe there are enough self-confident, good-looking bald guys like me in the area to picket the place. If they won't listen to our demands, we can always wax our pates and put our heads together in an effort to blind the lot of them if not focus the rays of the sun and burn the place to the ground!

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Craven Nonsense: Dissecting Another Liar for DA LAWD

In the article I wrote about baldness and perceptions thereof a couple of days ago, I neglected to mention the Lex Luthor stereotype — that is, that bald men tend to be sinister villains. It isn't true, of course. Only some bald men are not to be trusted, and in the interest of fairness and the opportunity to slice up yet another Creationist liar with the scalpel of reason, I'd like to introduce readers to Michael Craven, President of the Center for Christ & Culture, a "ministry dedicated to discipleship and renewal within the Church that works to equip Christians with an intelligent, thoroughly Christian and missional approach to culture." With a mission statement like that, you already know that something slimy and utterly devoted to misleading readers is coming. Craven has published an article in his blog at Crosswalk, "the intersection of faith and life." As we all know, intersections are dangerous places, and so we'll be sure to look both ways as we traverse this one.

Politics, Religion, and Evolution: The Three Don’ts

I have written many articles over the years often addressing controversial issues, some of which have provoked strong reactions. However, no other subject so provokes as the suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is false.

In my recent article, James Watson is Not a Racist; He’s a Darwinist! I commented on the recent statements of noted scientist and evolutionist, James Watson. You may recall that Watson suggested that black people were inherently less intelligent due to their stunted evolutionary development. As I pointed out, Watson was simply speaking in a way that revealed the ethical dilemma of Darwinism in which morality as we understand it has no place. True to form, the evolutionists were outraged.

This is why this Craven liar gets such strong responses — he's leading right off but misrepresenting his subject matter. He's created a religious straw man called "Darwinism" and asserted that there's no place for "morality as we know it" in this fabricated faith. The truth of the matter is that there's nothing in evolutionary theory that says that African and European brains should be expected to be different; Watson's suggestion that they are isn't based on science but on his own prejudices. In fact, the first question a smart analyst would have asked about Watson's statements is why if we were to posit that there might be a difference that Watson could jump to the conclusion that divergence would create a superior European brain instead of a superior African one. Craven has no interest in making a scientific evaluation of Watson's nonsensical utterances, though. His entire purpose is fulfilled by jumping up and down and pointing like an overexcited monkey at Watson and foisting him off as exemplary of all evolutionary biologists — most of whom, by the way, thought Watson was a clown long before he spewed his latest bit of racist arrogance. Moreover, Craven misrepresents not only evolutionary theory here, but all of science. Science is about explaining how physical systems work and develop, so of course morality isn't explained as core evolutionary theory. That isn't what science does; morality also isn't explained by meteorology, physics or automobile repair manuals. Is that a problem? Evolutionary biology is not, and has never been, intended as a repository of moral and ethical wisdom; it explains how the diversity of life came to be. Must we include a moral dimension in every explanation of every phenomenon? Damn that Betty Crocker for not putting the Gospel of Luke in her cookbooks!

So if "evolutionists" were outraged, it's because this liar for DA LAWD has painted us all as a bunch of amoral racists in order to pursue his agenda of whipping the true-believers into hatred in order to advance the "culture war" that is the stated end of his perverse pastorship. What he's done, in fact, is the precise equivalent of Watson's own misleading statements about race. Necrophagous birds of a feather slurp carrion together.

First, I did not say that Darwinian evolution is inconsistent with any ethical system; I wrote that is was inconsistent with Judeo-Christian ethics and morality. If it is to be logically consistent, Darwinism demands a completely new understanding of morality in which the preservation of the fittest becomes the highest moral good.

There's nothing logical about this statement at all. Evolutionary biology, as I've stated, has nothing to do with teaching any particular morality. It's an explanation of everything we see in biology, binding it all together into a coherent context. It isn't a religious or moral system, and only the most twisted and/or ignorant insist that it should be used as a basis for human society. We could substitute any number of other theories in the place of Craven's "Darwinism" straw man and come out with equally valid conclusions for this reason. Should we use physics as a moral compass? How about interior design? Would metallurgy make for a good code of ethical conduct? Survival of the fittest, as it were, is an explanation for how the frequency of alleles in a given population change over time, not a declaration of how humans should interact with one another.

In Descent of Man, Darwin tried to demonstrate that all human traits—including moral behavior—are different in degree, but not in kind, from other organisms. Darwin argued that all human behavior [including morality] was a result of biological determinism and not human reason. This implies that we do not possess a rational moral nature but that all our actions are driven by the biologically-induced aim of survival. Logically speaking, this aim would be [and must be] opposed to self-sacrifice or altruism of any kind if such acts do not contribute to your prosperity and survival.

Here's what Darwin actually said about morality in The Descent of Man:

"The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilised races, the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality. Ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his sole guide though few escape this influence, but his habitual convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. His conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection.

The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a considerable advance in man's reason, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for His existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture...."

In other words, Darwin didn't say anything like what Craven is maintaining. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Darwin is offering a hypothesis as to why we see a moral intelligence in all humans, not just in those who ascribe to a particular set of religious beliefs. He goes on to hypothesize that religions arise to codify moral behavior rather than moral behavior stemming from religious belief in the first place. Ethical conduct, in Darwin's view, is one of the products of natural selection in humans because it allows us to work together and to trust one another; social behavior was a major factor in the survival of our ancestors. What Craven doesn't like about this, of course, is that it all embodies the possibility that supernatural agency isn't necessary in the explanation of the morality that Darwin posits as existing not only outside of Christianity, but inside it as well. In any case, he certainly isn't stating that humans can't think about morality. If anything, this should serve notice that we must do so, or else fall under the dominion of "cruel and malignant spirits" when we do not. Those "cruel and malignant spirits" surely extend to the wrathful deity posited by fundamentalists who advance such preposterous notions as the smashing of airplanes into skyscrapers in order to punish homosexuals or the spread of horrible diseases amongst populations who don't happen to believe in the same sky-ghost as the Fundamentalists themselves. That things may be otherwise is the suggestion that raises Craven's hackles, because Darwin simply doesn't say what Craven accuses him of having said.

Additionally, it should be noted that modern evolutionary theory doesn't really care about this particular bit of Darwin's work. It should be kept in mind that Darwin wrote some 130 years ago and that what he wrote was only the basis for future investigation. Nobody takes Darwin's work as some kind of gospel; the man didn't even understand the basis for inheritance. He had a brilliant idea, not a flawless one. We know much more about biology now than Darwin did, and biologists are free to investigate and even disprove any particular piece of his theory — based on empirical evidence, not merely on whether they have some belief or another. Would Craven offer that we're free to do the same with the bible? Can we accept Leviticus but reject Corinthians? Rhetorical question, that, although Fundamentalists pick and choose for themselves, they bristle at others who would do so.

This is typical of the silly statements so often made by evolutionists. On the one hand this person assumes Darwinian or “macro” evolution to be fact. The only fact related to Darwin’s theory is the observation of “natural selection” or genetic adaptation occurring within species. This was Darwin’s unique contribution to evolutionary theory. Others prior to Darwin had developed evolutionary theories but none had ever identified a plausible mechanism by which such evolutionary changes could have occurred. Natural selection is an observable phenomenon but again, only within a species. The theoretical begins and remains to this day at the point when you assume this same process occurs between species.

Ah yes, the old micro/macro canard. First off, natural selection is not the same thing as adaptation. First, some change (mutation, duplication, hybridization, etc.) is necessary. Natural selection is essentially the manner by which a given phenotype is deleted or maintained within a population. There is no boundary at which the accumulation of these mutations has to stop, and indeed we have seen the arisal of new species many times over in human history as well as having numerous lines of evidence demonstrating that it has occurred without our direct observation of the process (cetaceans, horses, butterflies, fungi...) We also see natural selection acting between species all the time as ecosystems change. Look at the expansion of deserts in Africa; plants that can successfully exploit dry conditions (e.g., Euphorbia spp.) replace those that cannot as conditions change, the change in conditions being the selective pressure behind natural selection. We do not expect to find duckweed growing in the Sahara, even though it certainly did when that same area was not a desert. This is exactly "natural selection" between species. Craven is attempting to redefine natural selection to suit his own ends, of course. He's simply lying for DA LAWD once again, but the only people I would hope he's fooling are the ones who are already so conditioned as to accept his nonsense uncritically.

Secondly, Darwin’s theory of evolution does indeed have a “goal”—providing an alternative to the biblical explanation of origins. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin was a noted intellectual, physician and writer who, long before Charles, theorized an evolutionary alternative to biblical origins. The senior Darwin strongly opposed Christianity going so far as to include “Credulity, Superstitious Hope, and the Fear of Hell in his catalogue of diseases.”

Special note: This bit of rhetorical legerdemain should be enough to tip anyone off as to what Craven is up to. The assertion made was that the process of evolution doesn't have goals; Craven flips that over to be a statement about Darwin's writings about evolution. This says nothing about evolution itself, which has no direction, no goals, and no scala natura embodied within it. Moreover, he then makes evolutionary theory an attack particularly on Christianity instead of one upon supernatural explanations of natural phenomena in general. It is not that evolutionary theory states somewhere that Mithra poofed all life into existence instead of Jehovah having done it; evolutionary biology is equally inimical to a belief in Mithra-originated creationism as it is upon the Jehovah-originated version. But we can go further; all of science is the explanation of natural phenomena in terms of natural causality. Again, we could substitute any scientific discipline here and come to the same conclusion; does physics back religious belief better than biology? Do we find in geology that plutonic rocks were created by Jesus, or in polymer chemistry that polystyrene was whipped into being by Allah? Craven's attack is not upon only evolutionary biology; his goal is to overturn all of science and, moreover, all of rational thought. Couple this with his earlier mischaracterization of Darwin's statements about morality and we get right to the core of Craven's side of the story — we must all shut off our reason and turn to his bible in all matters. All inquiry must cease, because it is an affront to the daemon that Craven demands we accept as the mover of all things. People such as Craven have always been around, ready to throw their bodies in front of the heavy machinery that has constructed our reasonable view of the universe. Thankfully, they inevitably get plowed under in the course of history. If not, then we would have no history. We would have only mythology.

Finally, this reader’s statement reveals the self-contradictory position of Darwinians who embrace Judeo-Christian morality. On the one hand he objects to my moral criticism that Darwinism is racist but on the other he writes, “There is no right and wrong or good and bad in science and nature.” Exactly! If nature is the ultimate and final reality, there is no universal right or wrong and each individual is at liberty to live in whatever way best serves their selfish interest of personal progress and survival. So by what authority can Darwinism condemn racism? This is just one of the areas where Darwinism conflicts with reality demonstrating its fallacy.

Yes, and if nature is the ultimate and final reality, what right to I have to decide what color to paint my house? Surely it must be painted green and brown, since those are the colors of nature! This sort of non sequitur is precisely the product of Craven's absolutist thinking. Just because morality is not imposed upon us by some grand supernatural force does not mean that we cannot arrive at it on our own. I do not need some straw man religion called "Darwinism" to despise racism or any other number of foolish beliefs founded on nothing at all. I can see the humanity in another, and that is enough. I can imagine myself in his place. And then I can invoke what I know from biology to pick apart the claims of racism, as I did at the beginning of this very article when I attacked the claims made by Watson. At no time was it necessary to bring anything supernatural into my thinking, and so I have answered Craven's question before he even asked it.

Now, let's turn it around. In a system which holds as one of its beliefs that there is a "chosen people," that records the ancient genocide against non-believers and those of non-Judean nationality, that maintains that the whole world was destroyed by a flood and all but perhaps a half dozen human beings were wiped out, how does one argue against racism? How does one argue against incest, for that matter? I mean, after the flood... who exactly repopulated the planet if the only survivors were on Noah's ark? This implies, certainly, that Noah's son's had sex with Noah's daughters, does it not? Therefore, according to Fundamentalist Christianity, it is perfectly alright to sleep with your sister. It is perfectly alright to burn Tunis to the ground and slaughter every man, woman and child in Nepal. Wonderful stuff, this religion. How perfectly moral.

...Concepts such as compassion, mercy, forgiveness, as well as the belief in human equality are virtues revealed exclusively through and established by a Christian interpretation of life and reality. These virtues are recognized as uniquely human and nowhere relevant to the animal world.

Right... before Christianity, there was no such thing as compassion or mercy. Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists are merciless killing machines, for these are traits possessed exclusively by Christianity. Nor does any animal exhibit compassion or mercy. This isn't an "interpretation of reality," but a fairytale told by an idiot. What we have here, folks, is a declaration of war against all things non-Christian. This is the dehumanization of the bulk of humanity. Craven has just told us that anyone who isn't Christian is an animal. Brilliant stuff, and we must be aware of this sort of thinking in order to expunge it from our collective existence. This is precisely the same foment suggested by militants of every faith and it's calculated exactly to make it easier to place a gun against the blasphemer's head and pull the trigger.

Make no mistake, Darwinism is not science, it is philosophy. It is dogma! This, I think, accounts for both its proponents’ vehement defense and aggressive reaction to any challenge...

Darwinism, in fact, doesn't exist, apart from the imagination of Craven and those who follow in the same footsteps as he. It's a lie, a straw man created by a group of individuals as an easily knocked-down effigy because what they're really opposed to is not so handily defeated. Evolutionary biology is a scientific discipline, a theoretical framework supported by numerous and independent lines of evidence, that explains a phenomenon that we see. It does not tell us how things should be but explains how things are. It has no bearing upon moral thought, it does not tell us how to build a community, and it does not inform us on how we should deal with one another in our relationships. There is no one who thinks that Darwin's ideas on the rise of diversity in life are a divine edict. Nobody has an altar to Darwin in their lab. Like all scientific systems, evolutionary biology is a tool applied in its proper place. I don't expect the mailman to give me tax advice, and I don't expect an evolutionary biologist to explain to me why I shouldn't rob a bank.

And there we have it. Craven has given us more of the same; these arguments never change, and they're never honest. We've got just one more liar for DA LAWD and, unfortunately, there are any number of people who'll be taken in by this heap of deception because it's easier to simply accept the assertions of another than to gather the evidence necessary to reach a valid conclusion of one's own.

Thanks tons, Michael Craven, for offering supporting evidence for the notion that bald men are sinister figures. You've only made it that much harder for the rest of us to be trusted.

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The Chroming of the Dome: On the Joys of Being Bald

Just before waking up this morning, I had a nightmare — more properly a morningmare, I suppose, but there's no word in English to describe a bad dream in the early hours of the day. In any case, I dreamed that I was about to depart a lecture hall and had left my hat on a window ledge. As I put it on, I noticed that there was hair getting into my eyes. I could feel it on my ears, too, and the itch it caused was infuriating. I took my hat off but the hair was still there. I reasoned that it had to be a wig and tried to pull it off with no success. The hair was growing out of my head! I found a mirror and looked at myself and thought that I looked ridiculous. All I wanted to do was get this irritating mass of keratin off of me. And then I woke up.

This brief bad dream is a good depiction of how I feel about having hair. Despite countless TV commercials and marketing ploys that have attempted to convince me that I should feel otherwise about my follicular situation, I like being bald. My only regret about it is that there isn't a pill I can pop to make the little bit of hair that still insists on bristling up from my scalp stop doing so entirely. Then I wouldn't have to shave.

I've heard that baldness is a heritable trait passed down through one's maternal ancestry. I don't know with any certainty whether that's true in general, but it definitely isn't true for my lineage. While many of the men on my mother's side of the family saw their hair thinning as they entered their sixties, it was on my father's side that they lost it entirely by their thirties. This is true for the three generations I can trace my family on either side, in any case. My paternal grandfather, for example, was a 6'4" giant of a man who worked as a prison guard for most of his life and bore the nickname Mister Clean among his fellows, a moniker that became the name of his boat after he'd retired and moved to Miami Beach. My paternal uncle was bald as well. Ironically, my father kept his hair. As for me, my hairline began a rapid retreat from my eyebrows by the time I was in my early 20's.

I was a punk rocker in high school. Part of my rebellious regalia was my red and blue hair. When I went away for my first attempt at a university education in 1983, I stopped coloring my hair and let it grow to my shoulders. I'd moved in with a gaggle of neo-hippies by 1985 and let it grow even longer as I toured a few Grateful Dead shows and dropped the occasional dose of acid. By 1988, when I left school, I started cutting it shorter again because I needed to find work and had been brought up to believe, per my prison guard grandfather and police officer father, that long hair told the world that you were a person not to be trusted. When I moved to a very conservative part of Pennsylvania less than two years later, I cut it even shorter and took a job at a printing concern that demanded its employees looked well-groomed as defined by Mennonite Brethren standards.

By the time I'd moved to San Francisco late in 1991, my hairline had already receded noticeably. I let my hair grow again for awhile, but I no longer felt comfortable with the way I looked. I was on the bus home from my job at a promotional print design firm South of Market when it dawned on me that maybe I'd look better with my hair cut extremely short, as in a buzz. I got off the bus a couple of stops early and walked into the nearest barber shop, which turned out to be very near the corner of Irving and 9^sup Avenues, a stretch occupied mainly by Chinese-owned businesses. There were no other customers, and the woman who seated me in a chair asked me how I wanted it done. I told her that I wanted my hair cut as short as she could. She picked up a comb and scissors, but I explained to her that I meant really short. She wasn't quite understanding me, so I pointed to the electric clippers hung up on the side of her stand. She looked puzzled, so I tried to explain to her what I meant. She kind of got it; she clipped my hair down to about a half-inch, and I didn't like it at all. I told her to chop it back to 1/8", and she didn't understand that at all. One of her coworkers explained to her in Chinese and then she proceeded to give me the clipping I wanted. I paid and walked the rest of the way home.

The next morning, I still thought it looked all wrong. As I was shaving to leave for work, I decided that the leftover bit of fuzz had to go. I've shaved my head in the same way nearly every day for the past 15+ years now. I have yet to feel the smallest regret for my decision to do so.

At about the same time as I first began shaving my head, I began noticing ads for various hair restoration treatments. I believe this was the same time as Minoxidil hit the market, and of course there was the "I'm not only the president of the Hair Club for Men, I'm also a client" campaign. Nowadays, there are any number of remedies for baldness. We've got Finasteride and copper peptides and spironolactone. If you'd like to pretend that your head is a Christmas tree, you can buy what amounts to hair-colored flocking in a spray can. You can get bits of hair-producing flesh gouged out of one spot and grafted into those at which growth has ceased; I'm told that the procedure no longer results in the look of a doll head. If you're really desperate and not put off by a bit of elective mutilation and a price tag in the neighborhood of $10,000, you can even get the bald parts of your head cut out and the hairy bits stitched together. Yummy stuff, no?

I realize that not all men look good without hair. If one has a lumpy or pointy head, for instance, hair serves an important purpose in covering up the flaws. For those with well-shaped craniums, however, I wonder why it is that there's such a worry about showing the old dome off to the world. In my personal experience, I've found that there are plenty of women who appreciate the look and I must say that long fingernails raked over an exposed scalp in just the right way is one of the most enjoyable sensations one can experience. So why are there so many heavily-marketed remedies for baldness? This isn't a disease needing a cure, after all. This is just what some men look like, particularly the lucky ones... the ones who, twenty years ago, weren't letting the hair go long on one side to comb it over and grease it down (did that ever seem like a good idea?) Of course, there have always been toupees and wigs available. I particularly like the one shown in the image to the right, modeled for us by former NYC mayor and current Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani — who used to wear a combover before coming to the conclusion that he was a gentleman who preferred blonds.

That's what marketing does, though. When there's no real need to fill, it's nice to be able to create one and draw a salary in the process, I'm sure. Would I ever try one? Hell no! I like my hair the way it is: far, far away from me. I've never sat down and calculated how much I've saved on shampoos and conditioners and who-knows-what-else hairy-headed folks slather on their brainpans every day, but I'm sure it's a sizable sum. I never have a bad hair day; the closest I get is when my shaving razor needs replacing, and that's easy to do. I am entirely unafraid of dandruff; the fungus that causes it can find no suitable home on my head. Bugs and bats never get tangled in my bare scalp, and if you think the wind feels good blowing through your hair, you ought to check out how it feels when the hair's out of the way. When it gets cold, I put on a hat to protect myself from potential brain-freezing. If I had hair, what would I have done on all those hot days in Florida?

The marketing would have us believe that hair loss is some terrible thing; have a look at this particularly nasty snippet:

Hair loss is a nightmare to any person, be it a man or a woman of any age. Besides being a medical problem, it also becomes a social stigma and causes worry, trauma and embarrassment to the affected person.

— Source

A nightmare to any person? I have nightmares about the stuff growing back! I have never once felt embarrassed or stigmatized, though I am aware of the fact that other people think that I might, and all that is for me is an occasion for icebreaking humor. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, a fellow bald colleague of mine and I were at a happy hour, discussing lab protocols over beers, when a third colleague asked if he could join us as the two of us were part of the mythic Confederacy of Bald Men. My response to him was that if we two hairless scientists were to put our heads together, we could make a real ass of ourselves (think about it a moment). I've never felt the least bit uncomfortable despite all the dollars spent on advertising space to tell me that I should. I look at such things in the same way that I view campaigns that tell women that they need to have a bony backside and perfectly round F-cup breasts for some guy to find them attractive. It's all very silly stuff and none of it takes into account the joys of either a well-padded posterior or a gloriously smooth cranium.

Every morning, I wake up and shave, like most American men. I take an extra three minutes or so to cover the top and back of my head as well as the front. I currently use a Gillette Sensor razor, triple-bladed, as I find the twin blade version isn't as good for getting the little bits where my ears join the sides of my head. I don't need to comb, arrange, flatten or color anything up there. When I'm done, I step outside and feel the wind or sun right there on my bare scalp. The best part of it is, LL loves how my head feels right after I shave, so I'm subject to frequent cerebral caresses immediately after leaving the bathroom. I can't think of a finer way to start off the day.

Speaking of which, I need to go shower and shave, so I'll leave this entry here. Pass the shave gel and hold the Minoxidil slather, please!

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