Many questions about finasteride!
Since you have lots of first hand experience with this topic, I have a couple questions for you about hair loss treatments. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read this:
1) Approximately how many patients have you prescribed finasteride? Out of these patients, approximately what percentage would you guess experienced side effects? Have you ever had a patient who ended up with long term side effects after stopping the drug?
2) Why do you believe Propecia is so widely feared, while other drugs known to have sexual side effects (mainly antidepressants) don’t carry the same baggage?
3) Do you believe Minoxidil can maintain a man’s hair on a long term basis?
Over my years in practice, I have prescribed thousands of men the drug finasteride (~50,000). I have seen sexual side effects reported to me in about 4% of these men. When I see this sexual complication, I often reduce the dose. Over time with a reduced dose, half of these men can take the drug without the sexual side effect (libido decrease and ED problems).
The internet is good and bad. The bad is that too many forums focus on negativity so we hear more about the negative side effects than the positive ones. I always tell my patients about one of my sons who went on finasteride and found an increase in is sex drive. How often do you hear about that one. Also the legal climate with class action law suits against Merck is like a circus, join the circus, claim impotence and possibly become rich. Not a bad scenario. This climate clearly colors what we hear.
Minoxidil can not prevent the genetic hair loss from happening. It may grow new hair in places like the crown, but the results are not dependable nor predictable and the results are not dramatic.
The doctor didn’t answer whether or not he has had a patient report persisting side effects after stopping the drug.
Class action lawsuits are a means of recourse for people to seek justice when companies intentionally conceal negative information about their products that harm customers. It remains to be seen how the courts will handle these disputes but it doesn’t sound like too much fun to pretend you are impotent and try to prove this publicly in court in order to get some uncertain damage award. There are much easier scams to run. It is more likely in my view that doctors and companies would want to continue to conceal or resist new data to avoid being found liable for prescribing or selling dangerous drugs without properly informing their patients of the risks.