Doctor Rassman, I’m curious as to your thoughts on the following article. I just learned of the development process for Propecia and was shocked to find they intentionally engineered the drug to match the hormone profile of pseudo-hermaphroditic children because they had smaller prostates and a lack of male pattern baldness. I can’t see any patient willingly taking this drug if they were aware of its origins. The entire concept seems drawn up by a completely mad scientist.

Only page 1 is necessary to read, the rest is just sycophantic quotations regarding Merck’s profits.

Link: Keeping the Pipeline Filled at Merck

I agree that what you read seems strange, but this isn’t only limited to Propecia/Proscar (finasteride). These types of discoveries in medication development are common.

Scientists often look to nature and outstanding traits/illnesses to understand certain diseases. When scientists found a group of a population with no prostate issues and no male pattern hair loss, they made a connection that it may have something to do with being pseudo-hermaphroditic, which led to the realization DHT had something to do with it. But the converse is NOT true: Just because you have low DHT does not mean you will be pseudo-hermaphroditic. Just because you take a drug to lower your DHT does not mean you will be pseudo-hermaphroditic. The hermaphroditic issues ONLY impact the fetus in the first trimester of pregnancy and not in boys or men. And even then, the dosage for this to occur in pregnancy is not understood.

Back to pharmaceutical discoveries — many drug origins are from strange findings. The common drug penicillin was discovered from molds. The widely used anti-wrinkle treatment Botox is from the poisonous toxin botulism. The flu shot many people get yearly is derived from viruses. The mascara that women put on their eyelashes are derived from earth worms. The first hormone replacement therapy drug to treat symptoms of menopause was made from the urine of pregnant horses. Certain blood pressure medications were derived from venoms of snakes. Coumadin is a rat poison that is used to thin the blood for certain patients to save their lives. My point is: medications can be very strange.

Hello doc,

Just wanted to thank you and your team for providing everybody with a website where we can come and get the proper information we need when dealing with our hair loss problems. I have two questions:

1. If you are on proscar (cutting it in quarters) and you get sick or get a cold, would it take longer for a person to heal or get better because of the proscar?

2. We have a somewhat famous hair transplant clinic in the area that I live in, and one of his male models the HT doctor employees is a colleague of my one friends. It turns out that this male model HASN’T had a hair transplant EVER (he does have some recession on the temple area but for the most part has long lucious hair). I do not know why this doctor uses him because its all fake. I’m in the advertising business and if I were to advertise a false or fake product I would lose my job and could be sued. So why would this doctor use a person who has not even gotten a transplant, and risk losing his job/license?

Take care.

1. Finasteride does not prolong a cold. I don’t know how you’d link the two.

2. I agree that using fake patients is not a very ethical practice. You should report that doctor to the ISHRS (assuming he’s “famous”, he’s probably a member) and your local medical board. Medical boards should put him/her on notice and a non-response will almost certainly put his/her license at risk.