I'm not gonna say I can appreciate the amount of shit you've had to go through because of this drug, because honestly, no one can unless they've been in that sitatuation, but I do offer my condolences.
Still, I'm not jumping on the propecia = bad bandwagon yet.
I've heard of a few other studies, the prostate cancer one above and another one in which the drug was said to cause penile tissue to atrophy in rats...lovely.
The prostate cancer one appears to be a bit blown out of proportion according to the statistics I looked at. As for the rats, do you know what kind of dosage they were given? Whenever I hear someone cite tests on lab rats as a reason for a drug being bad, I think back to the 50s when scientists injected gram upon gram upon gram of MSG directly into rats until they died. After these experiments, they arrived at the conclusion that monosodium glutamate = omg bad, and people have been freaking out ever since (those with allergies certainly have a reason too). If there's one thing I know in life, it's that you can kill a rat by injecting enough of anything into its blood.
I don't think they are in great frequency, but I do believe that they are far more common than Merck would have you believe; I find their 2% figure quite ridiculous to be honest, it just doesn't seem to be realistic. Now sure there are a lot of people who take it for years and seem to be fine, yet there are also many who experience problematic side effects while taking the drug and then there are those in which such side effects persist.
Yeah, it would be nice if there were some studies done by responsible third parties on the effects of propecia, so we could gauge whether Merck's telling the truth or not. I can say, that propecia has been approved both in America and Canada, and Canada historically is far more stringent with what comes into its drug line than America, so perhaps that's reassuring to those considering propecia.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/foi/nda/97/020788_propecia_toc.htm
Like any drug, the potential for side effects exist, and like any drug, your doctor needs to be heavily consulted before you begin taking medication. I'm not sure whether propecia's available over the counter in the States (isn't in Canada), but I'm distressed to hear how many people don't seek much medical advice, ignore medical advice, or accept medical advice that sounds a bit flimsy simply because they're eagre to solve their perceived problem (yeah, perhaps I'm dipping into a bit of irony here, but oh well).
especially since my ethnic group is the one ethnic group that looks stupid bald.