As a young man 25 years ago, he had a hair transplant with the old fashion plugs. After seeing what it looked like (it was partly hidden with some hair at the time), he came to the conclusion that he made a mistake and immediately went to using a wig. Between his wig and a baseball cap, he had hidden his secret. About a year ago, he realized that maybe he could undo his plugs and after a year doing internet research, he came to my office to ask me an important question I’ve heard quite a few times before — “Can you just remove these plugs and make me bald so I can shave my head?”
Remember, this is NOT the standard of care today. Click the photo to enlarge.
To see the deformity, he lifted up his wig, which was tightly held to the scalp with tape. Although he is a Norwood Class 5A pattern with high density in the donor area, he never really wants to do hair transplants again, and just wants to be a normal bald man. This is a common finding in people who lived with the horror of the plug deformities of the old transplant work. Unfortunately, this type of problem is what so many people believe is today’s standard of care. Nothing could be farther from the truth as today’s hair transplants can not be told apart from a normal natural head of hair in a non-balding patient.
We agreed that I would remove each plug one-by-one and sew him up, making him a normal bald man. Removing these plugs may leave some minimal scarring. He wants me to transplant the hair extracted from these plugs and put them into the place they came from, to hide two obvious small neck scars. This should easily be done in one surgical session.
Come on now, I’m sure that he believed that the solution would be at hand in 5 years or so. If a weather man predicted a sunny day tomorrow, and tomorrow came with heavy rain, would you call that unethical behavior? There are limits as to the predictability of the future. In our capitalistic society, the entrepreneur believes that his inventions will work, will take less time than it really takes to develop a marketable product, and he often puts his hard earned savings into that business. Not all businesses succeed, not all ideas work and when they do not, it is the entrepreneur that usually pays the price for it. I am sure that Dr. Washenik was humbled by his failure to predict the timeline for cloning correctly. I personally commend him and Aderans for their persistence in working on the problem. 
There is a science called multi-variant analysis based upon our ability to take complex variables and put them together to get a better understanding of complexity. Estimating the number of hair grafts for a balding pattern is such a complex problem, as the variables include less than pristine numbers. The variables include:
To show the difficulty of the analysis, lets look at an example “average” head size, white skin, and black very fine hair. Let’s make our patient a Class 3A pattern (see diagram at right). With very fine hair, to fill in this area, it may take between 5000-6000 follicular units, but by just increasing the hair shaft thickness from fine to medium coarse, the same size area may only require about 2500 follicular units, substantially less than the same size area with very fine hair. Even with that said, the way the hair is distributed by the surgeon will dictate what the final results will look like. The calculators offered for estimating hair graft numbers clearly do not apply, because the multi-variant analysis is far too complex.
I know very little about Merck’s patent for topical finasteride, although they did file 2 patents (one in 1993 and the other in 1995) in the general area of finasteride use on skin. Johnson and Johnson holds at least two patents for topical finasteride, so it does appear that this is a hot field and what differentiates one process from the other is something that I do not have the time to review. Does anyone with a bunch of time and interest care to go through these and create an itemized list?
We have always commented over and over it is a buyer beware market and that there is no cure for baldness! From the press release, I am not sure what to make of the cost of the product, but it states: “Kevis now has this molecule bio-engineered at a cost of $60,000.00 per kilo.” I’m not sure what gold is going for nowadays, but this seems pretty expensive.
Proscar is the same drug as Propecia, just in higher dosage (Proscar is 5mg finasteride, Propecia is 1mg). If you cut the medication, it is the same. You do need a different prescription for that, and some doctors may have a problem giving you a prostate medication prescription at 24 years old. Explain to them that you know to cut the medication into 4 pieces. If one doctor won’t give you a prescription, you can try another one.
A Chicago-area company that converted strands of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair into diamonds will soon use the same process on the hair of another music icon — Michael Jackson.