PETER HALPERIN, MD: One key difference is the way they're studied, David. Medically approved treatments undergo a certain type of testing, and in the best scenario they undergo something called placebo, blinded, controlled testing. That means that you take 1,000 people and give them a medication, and you take another 1,000 people, kind of like the same group as the first, and give them a placebo, or sugar pill, and see if the medication influences their life in what you're trying to study. So if you're trying to grow hair, then you give one group an active hair pill and you give another group a sugar pill and you see if the group taking the pill meant to grow hair actually grow hair, then you've done something. That's really what the FDA-approved types of treatments look at. They are medicines that have been studied. We know about their side effects, we know about their efficacy, how effective they are. We know that if you use the medicine in L.A., it'll do the same thing in New York, and it's down to a science. We know what it does, we know the side effects, we know how it works.
We don't know a lot about these herbal supplements, and that's the thing. They're not studied as rigorously, or studied at all. They need no approval to appear on the shelf, so a manufacturer can really say whatever they want about it. It can just sit there and say it's going to grow hair and detoxify your liver and do whatever else it wants to say, but it's not a medication and it doesn't come under the thumb of the FDA, like a medicine does.
DAVID FOLK THOMAS: So if it's not under the thumb of the FDA, is there any agency out there that if there was some product that you said, "This will grow your hair in three weeks," or something outrageous, would somebody rein that in?
