How to deal with hair loss, one nucleotide at a time

By Eli Kintisch

I'm faced with the same dilemma every time my hair begins to tickle my ears. Go conservative? Get it bleached? Dyed? Punky? At the age of 20, I should be playing fast and loose with my hairstyle.

But there's something inherent in me that makes me cop out each time, dropping nine bucks on the "trim the sides and the top" option. In a way, every cell of my body resists anything that could damage my hair while I still have it. Because I know, thanks to loudmouth genes, that my hair will be all but gone before I'm 30.

Fringe-edged photos show that both of my grandfathers were bald by age 25. Scientists have proven that the gene for baldness skips a generation on either side. So I'm not going to mess with a single lock because soon I'm due to lose them all.

I can see it now: I'm kissing the woman of my dreams in my apartment, and she knocks off my hat and suddenly pulls back, disoriented. "I forgot to feed the meter," she mutters. And I'll be off to the nearest bowling alley for a scrub 'n' buff. I know. You're laughing.

Granted, baldness is a petty concern in the larger picture. I'm young, healthy and happy. But it's not just uneasiness that I feel. Instead I'm awed--this is my first encounter with the power of the Genetic Age. Somehow, I have information that I feel I shouldn't have, and in small yet real ways that information affects my life. My advance knowledge of the inevitable lack-thereof is a small part of an era of genetic determinism.

As researchers hurry to fill every blank space on our chromosomal maps, we're developing the ability to predict disease with startling accuracy. And although we've yet to sequence even 10 percent of our genome, geneticists have identified over 4,000 genes which can be linked to diseases in some way. Phenylketonuria (PKU)--a nutritional disorder that causes retardation--can be treated effectively as long as it is identified through prenatal screenings. Blood tests are now able to identify the gene for Huntington's disease, a rare genetic disorder of the nervous system that strikes later in life. And new genes are being discovered every day.

Questions abound. How much about our futures do we really want to know? If there were a test telling you whether you'd develop diabetes in the next 20 years, would you take it? Should genetic information be available to employers, and to the insurance companies who clamor to find our genetic profiles? Should doctors tell a mother if her baby has the gene for a severe disease? These are ethical dilemmas which we will all have to cope with as our genes get a say in our lives. The power of our genes goes way beyond predicting doom for my future follicles.

Everyone harbors inklings about his or her future. She has a feeling she'll likely go into marketing, whatever that is. He sees televangelism lurking on the horizon. Maybe I'll be a jaded science teacher with an ulcer. Anything is possible.

But certainty it is rare when you confront your own days ahead. Should we take the word of the geneticist as law? Ideally, no, but I'll still shampoo gingerly and check my pillow in the morning.

Of course, for all the importance we give genetic tests, they are rarely entirely accurate. There is always a possibility that I will keep my hair and be able to wear the Seinfeld 'do well past my roaring twenties. Maybe I really should not join the ranks of the 40 million American men currently facing hair loss just yet. Maybe the first sign of premature aging is my anxiety, not my hairline.

But it's that anxiety that will support whole industries in the near future. I'm sure I'll be running to the doctors with credit card in hand. Propecia, the newest hair-loss drug on the market, will only set me back 50 bucks a month for the rest of my life. And, as the fine print at propecia.com whispers, I get to risk a two-percent chance of decreased sex drive and impotence. This is a shame, because with all that promised hair on my head, they say I'll need every bit of libido I can muster.

The costs of the genetic age don't daunt me. I've drawn a fundraising thermometer on a poster board, with $39,000 as a goal in red ink. That's what I calculate I'll need for 65 years of Propecia. So far, I've saved $17.25, though I lost half of it when I raided the jar for laundry quarters.

If you're losing your hair, I'm sorry--I don't mean to minimize what is legitimately more than just a lousy hand of genetic poker. I guess humor is my only recourse in the face of my first encounter with genetic prophecy.

But I realize that soon our genes will have weightier things to tell us than whether we look "distinguished" at 28 or 55. And, like everyone else, I'll have to face the decisions which come when you learn what you might lose.

Eli Kintisch is a junior in Ezra Stiles.

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