If You Trash Your Competitors, You Will Get Dirt on Your Shirt

I read with disgust your piece the other day (Doctors, Crooks, or Con Men — How Do You Tell the Difference?) which attacked doctors in such a way that your readers will get an unfair view of the doctors who do good hair transplants and are honest and caring. There are many doctors with high integrity who try to get the best for their patients. Why don’t you promote them and talk about the wonderful things that we can do today, rather than dwell on the few rotton apples out there?

From time to time, I just get overwhelmed by some issue and my frustration is shared with all of you. This is my blog, which is like a personal journal that I share with all of my readers. Sure, I answer hair loss questions that are written to me, but from time to time I also treat it as a place to express my thoughts and even vent my anger in hopefully some constructive way. The piece from the other day was clearly precipitated by one particular patient, but unfortunately, it was not such an unusual occurrence for me to see this problem come up. Of the four doctors who gave him opinions, two of them actually do good quality hair transplants that I have seen in my office, but the decisions they made when meeting this poor man were not necessarily driven by his agenda nor his welfare. I know, unfortunately, that many of the doctors in the hair transplant industry spend huge amounts of money promoting their hair transplant expertise. A 2 x 3.5 inch ad in the Los Angeles Times, for example, costs between $1300-2700 for each day it is run (depending on the day of the week and length of the contract), so when ads are run daily, the costs become staggering and the doctor is as much driven by his/her ability to support his ad budget and his staff salaries, as by his/her desire to be honorable and righteous. Does one agenda conflict with the other? I believe that they, unfortunately, do conflict.

To handle a high number of people responding to these ads, these doctors hire salesmen (often disguised as someone with medical expertise) who become physician extenders, often screening callers to find out who has enough money to afford a hair transplant. Salesmen earn commissions, and although commissions are illegal in California, the commissions in some form still are what drives the sales process. Every potential candidate is screened for his ability to pay the large fees, just as the prospective patient was quoted the other day. That patient had the money so I think that the blood hounds sensed it so the price incentives that were offered by one doctor had some sense of urgency to it. The process I just defined is sleazy and it is something that I have written about, much to my detriment in this heavily market-and-sales driven process. Unfortunately, this is not just a California problem, it is an industry-wide cosmetic surgery problem and some doctors from around the world fit well into the amoral mold I have defined here. But there are many good doctors out there as well, so shopping before you buy a hair transplant will probably lead you to a better choice than taking the first doctor you meet. Watch out for sales tactics that look like a used-car sales lot. Do not accept seeing anyone but the doctor who is going to do the work and never, ever accept anything that you are told unless the person is qualified to give you an opinion and can back up what the doctor tells you.

The doctor who wrote the above comment to me today does bring up some very important things. The surgery we can do today is almost miraculous and 6 of my family members who’ve had hair transplants think that I am God-like for how natural the work looks. I think that too many people have expectations of the deforming, pluggy, doll-look with corn rows, so it is a difficult road for today’s doctors to educate the public on today’s high quality reality. A hair transplant was not only good enough for my immediate family, but I also had it done. As I’ve shared before, I have performed surgery on the politicians, billionaires, CEOs of big businesses, celebrities, the Royalty of countries that my readers have read about, and a few probable mafia members from other countries who would not have allowed me to live had it not worked out and met their expectations. I am not the only doctor who can do this type of quality hair transplant, so please forgive me for yesterday’s and today’s diatribe. To complete my answer to the doctor who posed the comment to me, I must remind the doctors who are reading this blog that we have taken an oath to uphold our patients’ interests about our own. If our oath is not enough, most governments that license doctors require doctors to report any infraction in ethical behavior that we observe as a condition of licensure, something that even I do not adhere to, to the spirit and the letter of the law.

I remember in 1994, I spoke before hundreds of doctors attacking those whose ethics reflect the worst of the sleaze in the business. I openly called them ‘sleazy crooks’. I also remember that the audience stood up and applauded my comments because the large majority of doctors were also disgusted with those who dragged down this struggling new industry, making it particularly hard to break the monopoly that had been horded by a select few marketers. I felt good about my comments because I sensed that many of the doctors in the audience fully supported the victimized men we were focused upon helping. After many private congratulations in the hallway over my vocal position, one well known doctor waited on the sidelines. As the crowd that surrounded me thinned and dispersed, that well known doctor came over to me and said, “I did not like the way you talked about me.” He stomped off and I thought for a moment, remembering that I never named a name and the closest I came to identifying anyone was the label “ sleazy crook,” which seemed to have struck a sensitive cord with him. I think I remember saying, “If the shoe fits, its yours,” but I think that he walked away from me too fast to have heard my retort.

I hope that the doctor who posed his query to me here reflects those who supported my position in 1994 and would support this long winded commentary by me as well.