Several years ago, Bosley Medical Director and Aderans Executive Vice President Ken Washenik, M.D. declared with supreme confidence that the Aderans hair- multiplication procedure would be available to the public by 2007. As we know, this has not happened.
Simply put, although I fully appreciate that medical science is far from exact, it seems plain to me that these statements were made with the understanding that the predicted timelines were utter fantasy. Thus, I have little choice but to conclude that the statements were made with an eye toward self-interest, to wit, raising the firm’s profile and ultimately soliciting additional investment capital.
My question is this: If a doctor or a medical practice deliberately or recklessly declares the imminence of a cure when it knows or should know that the statement is materially false, should that be considered a breach of medical ethics?
Come on now, I’m sure that he believed that the solution would be at hand in 5 years or so. If a weather man predicted a sunny day tomorrow, and tomorrow came with heavy rain, would you call that unethical behavior? There are limits as to the predictability of the future. In our capitalistic society, the entrepreneur believes that his inventions will work, will take less time than it really takes to develop a marketable product, and he often puts his hard earned savings into that business. Not all businesses succeed, not all ideas work and when they do not, it is the entrepreneur that usually pays the price for it. I am sure that Dr. Washenik was humbled by his failure to predict the timeline for cloning correctly. I personally commend him and Aderans for their persistence in working on the problem.
I am optimistic of a hair loss breakthrough in 10 to 15 years, but if you asked someone a decade ago, they likely would’ve said the same thing back then. A lot of people are getting tired of hearing the same old “cure in the next 10 years” talk, but I will continue to be optimistic even if that timeframe comes and goes. Baldness isn’t a life threatening illness, but it is a billion dollar business… so as long as people continue to lose hair and there’s a market to end that loss, there will be companies clamoring to come up with the next great treatment. As technology evolves, the concepts that some people came up with that were once considered ludicrous can finally start to become within reality’s reach. Don’t get me wrong — there are still plenty of ridiculous ideas that will never work to treat hair loss. We’ll just have to wait and see and try not to buy into the hype too much, because there’s been far too many letdowns over the years (like that flying car we’ve all been promised).
