On the Front Lines for a Cure for Baldness

Excerpted from
Hair!: Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness
By Gersh Kuntzman

"Ugly is a field without grass, a plant without leaves, or a head without hair" - Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.), Roman poet

Dr. Coen Gho's first mistake was giving that interview

This was back in April 1998, when Gho, a hair transplant specialist and hair biology researcher in the Netherlands, consented to be interviewed by the reputable paper De Gelderlander about his preliminary research in something he called "hair multiplication."

Gho's work involved a form of "cloning" premature hair-stem cells that would then each give birth to dozens of more cells to be injected (not transplanted, mind you) into the scalp. It would eliminate the need for harvesting strips of hair from the back of a man's head as in the typical hair transplant, as well as the need to crudely punch holes in the recipient sites to create new follicle sites.

The injected stem cells would form the new follicles themselves.

"In principle," the paper stated (and it's a little rough here because I'm translating from the original Dutch), "it is possible to 'grow' an infinite amount of hair follicles out of a single hair Gho says that his technique will be cheaper and more 'patient friendly' than hair transplantation."

The paper said that Gho would be treating patients "within the year." That was almost two years ago.

So what happened? Le deluge.

Bald men are very clear about what they want: They want a cure for baldness and they want it now. So, researchers who have had even the most preliminary reports published in the most obscure scientific journals suddenly find their lives and their research turned upside down by the avalanche of interest and the level of impatience of the most vocal bald men.

When Dr. Ronald Crystal, the director of the Institute for Human Genetics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City demonstrated that he could stimulate the growth of hair in mice using a controversial gene-therapy procedure, he found himself on the receiving end of computer-clogging amounts of e-mail from desperate bald men begging to be included in clinical trials that would not exist for years-if they would ever exist at all.

When Dr. Angela Christiano, a genetics researcher at Columbia University, made key discoveries that could lead to the identification of the genes that cause baldness, people from all over the world started sending her batches of their own hair, dated

and labeled, every month. One bald man kept leaving voice-mail messages and sending e-mails to Christiano claiming that he was a doctor who wanted to work with her. "I knew he wasn't a doctor because he spelled medical words wrong, but I called him back anyway and it turned out he was just someone who wanted to volunteer."

Just returning phone calls has kept Christiano busy-and the call volume increases whenever her name is attached to any new paper.

When Colin Jahoda wrote a "brief communication" in the journal Nature last year describing his successful implantation of some of his own hair cells into his wife's forearm (which then grew hair!), he found that if he answered the volumes of mail and interview requests that he received, he could not do his work at all.

One colleague said that Jahoda has become "a total recluse now" rather than deal with the outside pressures.

Dr. Gho has largely joined those ranks as well after releasing even the most preliminary information about his research. That one article in De Gelderlander has kept the talk going in Internet chat rooms for more than two years.

"I contacted the clinic this month but could not get past the front desk," one bald man wrote in an Internet posting, implying that he should have been connected to Gho immediately. "The girl at the front desk said the phone was ringing all day with people asking about the process. . . . She would not let me talk with Dr. Gho."

Sympathetic? No way! The posting gave out Gho's phone number to anyone who wanted it. Many more people used it, further inundating Gho's office.

That posting was followed by one from a guy who claimed to have "spoken to Gho several times [and] heard from him that this treatment will be commercially available within one year."

But, the writer admitted, that was probably optimistic. "I don't know if I can trust this because he told the newspaper De Gelderlander that it will be commercially available within eight months and we know this statement didn't come true. ... If (and this is a huge if) Gho's work is as successful as he says, anyone who will have even one percent from this research will be richer than Bill Gates."

As so often happens when information is scarce, conspiracy theories began to spring up, fueled by quick dissemination via the Internet.

"I found out that someone who visited the clinic said that Gho can clone five hairs to every one hair, then clone five more hairs to each of those hairs," wrote another man, whose vague "information" only gave rise to further excited postings and, eventually, dashed hopes. "The result is a 30-times increase of the donor area, and the hairs are cycling normally. Gho plans to teach selected doctors in 8-12 months."

Finally, Gho himself had to step in, posting a plea on the Internet for some peace and quiet. Watch how his tone becomes increasingly agitated.

"Dear interested people," he began. "Referring to all the comments, questions and phone calls I received every day about the multiplication of hairs, I hereby will give my comment on the new procedure we call 'Hair Multiplication.' Yes, we discovered a new method but at this moment we are still in the experimental phase and want to do more research to improve the method and hairs don't grow overnight, you know?!?! We hope to have a final and practical protocol, which can be used by other physicians within a few years."

A few years, many bald men groaned in unison. No wonder Gho was forced to shift to uppercase letters for the rest of his posting, just so his readers would know he was serious.