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Jewish World Review June 19, 2002 / 9 Tamuz, 5762
Ian Shoales
Why would you want to do this? Well, chances are you're going bald. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the founder of Hairogenics, a somewhat hair-impaired person himself, started the company as a way to preserve healthy hair, so when a cure for baldness is found, the balding person will be able to-- I don't know-- clone his hank, I guess, or at least use it in voodoo ceremonies. For all you combover guys out there with money to burn, this might be a dream come true. On the other hand, Dr. Alexa Bower Kimball, a dermatologist at Stanford put herself on the line professionally to state, for the record, that this process "doesn't make a lot of scientific sense." Still, two hundred people as of April have signed up for the program, proving the old adage, "A man with a receding hairline and his money are soon parted." The problem regarding baldness, evidently, is not in the hair but the follicles, which stop working in balding people. So putting your hair in the freezer in the hope that one day you'll be able to put it back on your head one day is like stuffing leaves in a drawer, hoping they'll turn into a tree, trying to cram a chicken into an egg, watering a tire so it will grow into a car, or manufacturing a silk purse from the ear of a pig. It's spreading fertilizer on a dictionary to try to raise a novel, burying a football and waiting for a team to sprout, or buying some boots and hoping that makes you cowboy. It's magical thinking really, in a fantasy world, where reading the want ads equals having a job, money in the wallet means money in the bank, a remote in the hand means something good's on television, and a wistful glance means love is yours forever. Every molehill is a mountain, every desert an ocean, every precaution a blow for freedom, every word a thought, every thought a deed, every ticket a winner, and there's a chicken is flopping happily in every pot.
Still, fifty bucks is a lot of jack for fairy dust, especially when it looks
a lot like dandruff to me.
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06/17/02: Happy cows are really miserable?
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