Imagine a feature article, in one of America’s largest and most influential newspapers, about cigarette smoking, but without a single mention of lung cancer. Impossible? Yet the article about finasteride (“My So-Bald Life,” Off Duty, Feb. 22) is absent of any reference to post-finasteride syndrome (PFS). The article reports in near-glowing terms on a crop of telemed startups that allow millennial males to obtain the prescription medication with ease via mobile phones. Meanwhile, we get an average of 45 new PFS patients a month banging on our digital door from across the globe, up 462% since 2018. Desperately seeking help and often suicidal, they complain of sexual dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction and a host of other persistent side effects that define PFS, to say nothing of their decimated social lives and crumbling economic straits.
Their symptoms are validated by an emerging body of medical literature in journals ranging from the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology to Pharmacology, all of which are prominently housed on our website. An ever-growing number of these patients inform us that they were prescribed finasteride, virtually, by Hims, Keeps or Roman. And virtually without warning of PFS.
Philip Roberts
Post-Finasteride Syndrome Foundation
