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PROPECIA
BY PETER KURTH (published 08.16.98)
Readers of this column who've been agitated recently by my sarcasm and
contempt for "the real people" of this city can rest assured that
I welcome and even thrive on their remarks. I have an ill-deserved
reputation for cynicism. In fact, my life is drenched in cheer, rosy good
will and a mad hilarity. The neuropathy that plagued my legs last winter
and had me hobbling around town on a cane is almost gone, while the battle
against HIV is going so well that my doctor asked me recently if I was
sneaking "alternative treatments" behind his back. I said no.
One of the stranger side effects of the super-toxic chemicals I take
to stay alive is that my hair has started growing again. I mean new hair.
On my head, where for years there's been nothing but scalp.
I'm not making this up. Everyone who knows me has noticed it, asking if
I've had a new haircut, dyed what's left, or finally broken down and had
something implanted. I'm definitely reverting from "bald" to
"thin on top," a trick that could make me a lot of money if I
only knew what was causing it.
Along with my hair, my nails are growing at the speed of light, which
leads my mother to conclude that I must have died several months ago and no
one's had the heart to tell me.
Of course, I was lying to my doctor about the alternative treatments,
because for six months my partner and I have been getting testosterone
supplements to offset the hormone depletion caused by HIV infection. These
are steroids, "experimental" and thus frowned upon by
practitioners of conventional medicine -- the same people who dole out Viagra
or Propecia in truck-loads to their
patients. Propecia,
in particular, is a dicey drug, whose main ingredient, finasteride,
is normally prescribed for enlarged prostate.
I'm sure you're familiar with Propecia's TV
commercials, which advise you that "certain sexual side effects"
have been seen in "less than 2%" of the men who take it. This is
advertising as its most deceptive, since Merck, which markets Propecia, doesn't specify how many of these side
effects there actually are, and glides over the whole issue by saying that each of them, not the sum total, has
been seen in "less than 2%" of its customers. That adds up to a
lot of droopy libidos -- "less desire for sex," as the fine print
confesses, "difficulty in achieving an erection, and a decrease in the
amount of semen."
This will be good news for women who want to get some sleep, but it
only complicates life for men who are taking Propecia in the first place
because they want to think of themselves as satyrs, lusted over for their
fine heads of hair and ready to party hearty. A limp member is the worst
thing that can happen to the American male, and he knows it. Betrayed by Propecia, he is thus driven into the arms of Viagra,
which can kill him if he doesn't take it properly, or if he uses it in
combination with other medications common to a decomposing frame --
blood-thinners, beta blockers, drugs for high blood pressure, and, of
course, poppers, those little brown bottles of sex-enhancing vapors.
If men are the dupes in this scenario, women are the victims of their
newly engorged blood vessels and tingling scalps. A more sinister warning
attached to Propecia concerns "a specific
birth defect" that pregnant women can pass on to their children if
they so much as handle the pill.
"The capsules have a special coating that prevents human contact
with the active ingredients," Merck declares -- unless the pill
happens to be "cracked or broken," or gets crunched underfoot, in
which case you'd better not get it on your skin. We all know how men are in
the bathroom, unfortunately.
What you probably don't know is that the "specific birth
defect" associated with Propecia affects
male fetuses only. It interferes with the development of their sex organs,
leaving them in the company of what used to be known as hermaphrodites but
which queer theorists are suddenly calling "intersexuals."
Thus does pharmacology collide with culture in the Brave New World.
Here's what I know for sure: No babies were deformed in the rush to
give me a new head of hair. Come to think of it, I wonder if there isn't
some kind of collusion here between the pharmaceutical companies and women
who are tired of lying down on command. If this keeps up, a whole
generation of males might be born without penises, and that's enough to get
anybody to the drugstore, n'est-ce
pas?
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