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Comment by cactusplant7374 | Hacker News Reader

Has there been any progress on cloning hair follicles? I don’t want to move the hair around. I simply want more hair.

I saw a headline about this the other day. I couldn't find it but did come across this article. https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/lab-grown-hair-f...

No idea if ZME science is reputable at all.

Totally unreputable. That is not a scientific journal. That is some guy (Who's degree is in geophysics) biog. The article was written by him.

Here's the journal article from the authors mentioned in the article.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41762869/

They tried, and it sort of worked, but they couldn't stop the resulting cancer from getting cancer.

Could I donate mine to you? Been shaving my head for the last 20 years and I cannot wait for it to stop growing eventually... Seemingly it grows faster every year, as I need to continuously increase how often I trim it, I simply want less hair.

Edit: I love that someone downvoted me for offering my hair follicles to a random stranger, downvotes truly happen randomly here :)

You can't donate hair follicles .. it has to come from your own body

But all these people in Turkey walking around with their brand new hair follicles, aren't those from other people? Or from the same person, just elsewhere?

They take your existing hair follicles from areas that aren't thinning and move them to the thinning or bald area.

So in theory if I want less head-hair and more chest-hair, I could in theory do this by moving the hair follicles? Interesting stuff.

That would not be practical. Visible body hair (and head hair) is "terminal hair". Peach fuzz is "vellus hair". Androgens turn vellus hair into terminal hairs (and are also the driving force for male pattern baldness). There was a big stink on social media about the character Aloy in the game Horizon who had vellus hairs visible on her face - like every other human woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_hair

The follicles come from the back of your head. Feel your head, there's an area where the skull and vertebrae meet. Place your hand over that area. That's the "donor" area. Follicles on the front of your scalp are sensitive to DHT (what your body metabolizes testosterone into) for many humans. This is where male pattern baldness happens.

Buddy, I hope you have a glove on because you're about to catch these fists!

You can't donate follicles, but you can do IPL! All us bald(ing) people will hate you, though.

Yes, yes it's coming. In 10 years.

Just in time for fusion energy?

Yes, imagine endless energy and endless hair. It's like nuclear and hippy again, but stronger and ai-government-mandated

Oh, just like in the movie Gentlemen Broncos.

No no fusion energy company is going public shortly so the technology must be closer than that :)

There wasn't an effective weightloss drug until suddenly there was though.

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