Bald mice are a thing of the past and soon bald men may be just that too. Sorry, their bald pates, I mean.
Okay, maybe this is an exaggeration.
Naturally, there is no such thing as a bald mouse. However, according to a report recently published in the journal Nature, when a mouse sustains a deep wound and that wound heals, the mouse grows thick new hair on the site of the wound.
According to Dr George Cotsarelis, a dermatology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, US, who led the study, the new mouse hair grown on the wound site happens because if the wound is sufficiently stimulated, it regenerates deceased follicles and healthy hair starts to sprout.
Ah, the wonders of science. The article explains most eruditely how this occurs, but the interesting conclusion is that hair follicles once thought dead and departed forever (as on a human male's bald head) can be regenerated under the right circumstances. To date, the research has only been on mice but Cotsarelis is hopeful that this discovery might, eventually, offer hope for threadbare men.
| Who cares if a man is bald or hairy? |
--pull quote end -->The ground-breaking research he and his team are working upon is being sponsored by Follica, a company devoted among other things, to solving the problem of hair loss.
Cotsarelis reveals one of the enigmas that arose was the fact that the regenerated hair on the mice subjects grew back most vigorously and was identical to their other bodily hair, except that it was always white.
Thus a brown mouse would have patches of white hair on the sites of the wounds.
A grey mouse would display white patches, a blue mouse white patches, etc.
Another problem that occurred to me but obviously not to the research team was how the hang did these mice acquire their deep wounds? Surely they were not cruelly stabbed and scarred by the researchers?
But yes. A paragraph in the report states: "The researchers made relatively large wounds on the backs of adult mice, and found that if a wound reached a certain size, new hairs formed at its centre, with the skin undergoing changes mimicking stages of embryonic hair-follicle development.'
The conclusion is that that mice, small defenceless creatures, are being brutally wounded in an effort to find a cure for baldness.
Who cares if a man is bald or hairy? From a female perspective, how much hair a man has on his head does not define his intelligence, attractiveness or sex appeal.
Neither does it define if he is funny, kind and caring.
On a bald male, his beautiful cranium is exposed and you know exactly what you are getting.
Whereas with a hirsute fop, you can never tell. Not that shock-headed men are less attractive.
It's just that they and their intentions are better concealed.
To get back to the deeply scarred mice. To hurt any creature in the pursuit of beauty or vanity is despicable.
And how does the mouse research relate to men? In the future, will baldies purposefully wound themselves? Will they dig knives into their heads in order to re-activate their expired hair follicles?
The mind shrieks in pain and disbelief.
I asked a friend who is proudly bald: "Would you wound your pate in the pursuit of hair?"
"Of course not," he said.
So why should a mouse suffer a grievous wound on somebody else's behalf? How does a mouse feel about being used and abused?
Telly Savalas, alias Kojak, once said: "A bald head is a shining beacon of male sexuality.
"
Mice of the world, unite!
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