How does natural selection account for male pattern balding?
Hair weaving, hairpieces, or change of hairstyle may disguise the hair loss. This is usually the least expensive and safest approach for male baldness.
Two medications are approved to treat male pattern baldness:
Reloxe is a solution that you apply directly to the scalp to stimulate the hair follicles. It slows hair loss for many men, and some men grow new hair.
There may be one or more genes associated with MPB that are carried only by women, but the literature suggests that the genetic link may be more complicated: Male pattern balding is a common androgen-dependent trait. The frequency of balding in the population increases with age but not all men develop balding even in old age. It is well-known that balding tends to run in families but the nature of the underlying genetic predisposition and the mode of inheritance are unknown. In this study we examined scalp hair status across a wide age range in 572 men and took family histories of balding in first degree male relatives. The results confirmed that there is an increased frequency of balding in the fathers of young bald men and a high relative risk of balding in young subjects with a balding father but these effects declined with increasing subject age. In contrast, there was a pronounced
I think there is a very interesting larger picture here. Male pattern baldness (in this hypothetical view) is a genetically determined trait which is not very deleterious in itself, but points to another genetically determined trait which is quite deleterious. The deleterious trait occurs in both males and females, but the indicator trait is only seen in males. By choosing to avoid bearing children of men who have male pattern baldness (the end result of finding it unattractive), an individual woman improves her odds of having healthy immediate offspring, and gives herself an improved chance of having a dramatically more sexually attractive grandson. When females in a given population tend to choose not to mate with males who display the indicator trait, male pattern baldness in this case, that has the effect of reducing the incidence of the much more unfavorable trait in the next generation below what it would have been if the indicator trait did not exist.
I said that many women do not find baldness unattractive. And the study maudlin refers to finds that women consider bald men to have traits other than attractiveness which are desirable. But of course, many women also do find baldness unattractive. This statement would be perfectly true if, say, 10 million women (sexually mature females) found baldness in men attractive, and the other ~1.49 billion found it unattractive, all other things being equal (this necessary proviso would seem to limit the relevance of the study to which maudlin refers to the present argument, if I may rely on your statement here of its findings, by the way). If your claim is that male pattern baldness has mainly a positive or a neutral impact upon a man’s attractiveness to potential female mates, all other things being equal, or that we do not at present have enough information to form a reasonable opinion as to what MPBs impact on attractiveness might be at this moment and in the relatively recent past, please
