Square1

Who exactly needs to give a "green light" to perform this on ourselves? If you want, you can already do it right now, like Kilian did.

The upside of just wounding and treating balding zones with verteporfin is that it doesn't require a hair transplant surgeon to perform, it could just be done in a regular beauty clinic where they perform microneedling. Maybe with some instructions on how to apply vp. I think I agree that the chances of success are not the best, but if somebody wants to fund that, all power to them and I would only lead to more knowledge about the working of this drug, which is good in itself.

When you count 5 cases of vp working, which are these except from the first of dr. Barghouthi? The 3 cases of dr. Bloxham? I find those less convincing to be honest. To me it is not a foregone conclusion yet that vp does what we all hope it does. Luckily, with the trials of Kilian, dr. Barghouthi 2 and hopefully dr. Bisanga, we will have a lot more information in a couple of months. I however completely agree with your last sentence. If all these new trials are positive, the question whether we can repeat the process on the same follicles with the same regeneration rate will be crucial.

How much time for 1 patient do you estimate this amounts to? If there is a fundraiser to pay the surgeon for these hours and for the verteporfin itself, while a regular patient that agrees to vp-usage pays for the procedure itself, what argument would potentially be nullified right?

Awesome news about dr. Bisanga and thanks to Melvin again to convince him. Like Melvin pointed out, is it good that he is a sceptic so any eventual positive findings won´t be met with the criticism that he is basically a fanboy. Also, is it clear that he has nothing to gain from this research since he already is a world class surgeon with presumably the income that comes with it. Interesting ideas as well on how to test the efficacy of vp. Not just photos or hair counts, but advanced tracking and matches techniques. Sounds interesting. With such a protocol, any eventual findings will be taken very seriously I think. I only hope he doesn't run into problems or loss of motivation since he doesn't seem super excited to do it. Good development though. If funding becomes a problem for this one, I am inclined to chip in. If that is the sticking point for the dr. Mohebi trial, the same applies.

Although several experiments have taken place, any hard data on the efficacy of vp is unfortunately not yet present. It might be my autistic fixation on numbers, but I think that having these would go a long way in getting the movement ahead. Pictures can be very helpful, but also misleading due to things like lighting, angles etc and are therefore a lower form of evidence. If a reputable doc would find that a donor area has 80 grafts per cm2, from which 30 were removed and the part that was tested with vp contains 65 grafts /cm2 while the untreated area consistantly has 50 grafts /cm2, it becomes really hard to ignore the regeneration, especially if the following studies confirm that finding. Given that your organisation donated a capable device for this to dr. Barghouthi, you must have some credit in the bank to at least ask him what the plans are, right? Especially since he also got funds from the community to do such an experiment. That such information is only shared with those who have contributed something is understandable and logical.

In research, presented findings should be able to be challenged with a critical mind.

His first experiment meant that, if completely legit, the (functional) cure for balding is just around the corner. Why he isn't following up is unclear to me. The reasons he gave were not very convincing to an outsider and came across to me as excuses. It could be the case the there are just things he can better avoid talking about in public, but really plans on continuing once these issues are resolved. Also, there are no logical reasons for dishonesty that are known to me. He is not making money on it whatsoever. He could be busy, but I would doubt that. The experiment involves him doing his normal job with just an extra step. Sadly, the possibility of some misleading but unintentional mistakes can not be ignored. I don't think this is the case, as there are no logical reasons for it, but who knows. Anyways, it would be crucial going forward to know what the reason of this delay is.

I would argue that the visual art of improvement and statistical progress are more or less the same thing. If someone would regenerate 100% of their donor hair during a hair transplant, no grafts are lost there so in that sense it is undetectable and therefore visually optimal. The only thing is that data is less subjective than visuals and would go a long way to convince doctors to experiment as well. Best of luck anyways, will be following your journey if you choose to make it public

Best of luck on your recovery and growth / regeneration! It is a great thing that you are doing this, not just (hopefully) for yourself, but for the community as well as this gives another data point and insight in the working of vp. In that last regard, did dr. Saifi keep statistics on how many grafts were removed and how many remained per cm2? That would give a great insight in whether there actually is generation in the treated areas.

Good news! Hope they are keeping statistics on extracted and remaining follicles per cm2 and will assess them periodically with a trichoscan, but I guess they don't. Despite this, this is a great development of course.

The post you refer to, was just Jonathan theorizing about what could be going on. Not even implying bad faith or any wrongdoing from the doc. That is just not "blaming without proof". Jordan has more than 11M inhabitants and dr. Barghouthi has an international reputation. I doubt that the lack of a suitable volunteer is a real issue.

The lack of docs willing to participate in trials regarding verteporfin is leading to desperation in this thread. There is a process taking place in which we look like a cult. Understandable but not really helpful. Asking critical questions should be encouraged, not discouraged in fear of hurting somebodies feelings. This is, in fact, science and not religion. The pioneering work of dr. Barghouthi is great. We can only hope that he expands on it with more trials. Will that happen? I hope so, but there must be something going on we don't know. If you, as a doctor, seen the results you have delivered with a novel treatment that you pioneered, wouldn't you continue with more work as soon as possible?

Well, if other drs aren´t picking up on it now, why would they do it in 20 years? The movement really needs new developments / successes in order to keep going and to maintain relevancy. Like a poster on th Dutch forum that I post on asked "If you guys are so convinced of this working, why aren't there more developments going on?". I did not have a real answer to this one. Dr. Barghouthi's second trial starting would be more than welcome in that regard. It has been delayed for more than hald a year I think at this point. Possibly for very valid reasons, but to me they are unknown. In general, you would say that if you are so close to functionally curing hair loss, you would continue until you get there.