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Baldness Gene Discovered — 1 In 7 Men "At Risk"
FiReaNGeL writes "Researchers conducted a genome-wide association study of 1,125 Caucasian men who had been assessed for male pattern baldness. They found two previously unknown genetic variants on chromosome 20 that substantially increased the risk of male pattern baldness. They then confirmed these findings in an additional 1,650 Caucasian men. 'If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the unrelated known variant on the X chromosome, your risk of becoming bald increases sevenfold. What's startling is that one in seven men have both of those risk variants.'" So maybe gene therapy will finally have a real purpose.
Of course, I'd argue that you're never sure where science is going to go, so pursuing different avenues is important, even if it seems a little less useful or even vain. In this case, I could foresee a situation where finding a solution to a rather simple problem, baldness, could help develop methods that would eventually be useful for dealing with cancer and Alzheimer's, which I can only imagine would be more complex to deal with. Also, you can't forget that its not like the entire community focuses on one topic at a time. Parallel research in separate but related areas tend to feedback off of each other; having too many people working on the same thing can at times only slow it down, since so much time is wasted either reinventing the wheel multiple times, or trying to keep things organized.
Because baldness research and treatment is a multi-million (if not billion) dollar industry. It's sort of like asking "who would market Viagra?" that flashes the big *DUH* factor.
Face it. Anything sex related and superficial is a huge money maker. Investors would be retarded not to tap into these markets.
Life is not for the lazy.
and I say it is a waste of money. I d not care that I am bald. I do not care if others are bald. I used to have a lot of hair. Now I don't. Started pretty you to get a higher and higher implant. I would not care if I would loose the rest or if it stays like I have it now. It only becomes an issue if you make it an issue.
To me people who are doing comb overs, buy wigs, hairtonic, have implants and what not because they are bald are wasting their time and money. People doing studies on it should be trying to figure out not how to get hair back, but how to let people accept that they and others are bald. That would be like having a cure, instead of taking away the symptoms.
(Obviously if you have a bad scars and such, this might be somewhat different, but I am talking about standard baldness)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Of course baldness is a disease. A minor one at first sight, but it can lower people's self-esteem and cause severe psychological diseases, such as depression.
Not true. It does increase my self-esteem, knowing that my baldness is due to high testosterone. And I believe that bald people are more active in sex than others. Anyone losing their self-esteem due to baldness, just realize that you are more 'male' than non-bald others and cheer up.
As someone with depression, i'll tell you that minor physical imperfections do not cause or contribute to this problem.
Depression is an emotional reaction to sweeping, systemic problems in our society.
Have you also been diagnosed with egotism?
You've literally written off the entire spectrum of depressions in favor of your own limited definition.
Does losing a spouse/pet/job qualify as "an emotional reaction to sweeping, systemic problems in our society"? Because people get clinically depressed for those and millions of other much more trivial reasons. I could list another 50 examples, but I'm not sure it would change your self-centered world view.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Let's take it to the extreme. Imagine if at 70 years of age around 40% of men lost their dick. It just falls off. Let us also imagine that by some miracle, there is no risk of infection and everything else still functions correctly. Something tells me this would bother me, and I'd want to stop it. We're talking about something a person has, going away. I don't see how your question is relevant.
Yup. The key is to note that the extra gene is quite common, so is not disabling, and probably has advantages. At a guess, it will be linked to increased testosterone. It would possibly be just as valid to call it the "Road Rage Gene". Nor is that a bad thing. Stupid on a road, but a lot of people respond positively to having aggressive defenders around them. (Ok, call it the Pit Bull gene.)
So having isolated out an important gene, and hopefully setting up a test for it, the next bit of research can be into finding out what else it is associated with. Should all vice-presidents be expected to carry it?
On the other hand, the baldest guy I know (for his age) is mild mannered, intelligent, strong in opinions but polite, and great to work with. So all this testosterone theorizing may be so much crap. It may be associated with testosterone tolerance. Now that is worth researching.
I don't get it, what's with the random dig at "profitability"? And why chromosome 21, in particular? Every chromosomes has genes related to various diseases, all of which could use "some of that" gene therapy.
Assuming you are talking about Down syndrome (since an Alzheimer's treatment would be stupendously profitable), that doesn't even make any sense: it's "trisomy 21", a duplication of the chromosome, and completely unrelated to gene therapy.
All in all, a bit of a stretch, just to get in knee-jerk dig at the pharmaceutical industry, wouldn't you say?
sic transit gloria mundi
Modern advertising is what made baldness "bad". It didn't used to matter much. Thus, your "reminder" theory is suspect.
Table-ized A.I.
Can't they focus the research on something more important than baldness?
Because it's not a simple matter of reaching a certain quantity of "man-months" applied to (for example) cure cancer. Our level of technological advancement simply isn't to the point where a Mongol Hordes approach is going to be effective. In most cases, we don't even know what we need to learn before we figure out which way to look for a cure for (x). Who knows, perhaps a technique for combating baldness may hold the key to curing diabetes.
The classic answer to all this is, "it takes 9 months to make a baby no matter how many women you assign to the task"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
How can it be shallow if (as most people would agree) a woman going bald is much more traumatic? Nobody tells her to "just get over it".
Either sexism is OK, or the things that people call "shallow" really aren't. You can't have it both ways.
I suggest you read Slashdot
what's wrong with being able to have more control over it? A lot of people here have made the case that we should concentrate on accepting baldness instead of changing it. But is that so different than accepting beards instead of developing a shaver?
Whether it's a matter of personal taste, societal standards, or inherent genetic cues - where is the downside to people having more control over how they appear visually to themselves and others?
Yes, it's possible to go too far with this as it is with anything. Spending $300,000.00 on an outfit instead of just dressing nicely, devoting your life to the gym, or jumping into not-ready-for-prime-time plastic surgery techniques (ex: Micheal Jackson). But just because you *can* go overboard with something, doesn't mean that's your only choice.
Frankly, where technology sits right now I think we'd be better off having stayed with powdered wigs for the time being. You get any hair style you want, and everyone does it so there's no out-cast factor. But we should be working towards having the level of genetic control over our hair that people want. Both in terms on more on our heads, and less pretty much everywhere else. There's a reason that the classic Greek statues bore zero resemblance hair-wise to either Dr. Katz or that fat guy from the Borat movie.