Treasure your best locks underground

Scared of losing your hair? Well why not lock up those locks 8212; in a temperature-controlled underground vault, protected from fires, flo...

Scared of losing your hair? Well why not lock up those locks 8212; in a temperature-controlled underground vault, protected from fires, floods and earthquakes? Why not, indeed!

A San Francisco-based start-up, Hairogenics Inc., on Monday officially launched a new subterranean hair storage service, adding a new strand to mankind8217;s endless search for a safer, fuller head of hair.

Hairogenics chief executive Michael Blaylock said his company would preserve hair samples in its special underground vault, keeping it fresh until science can devise a way to 8216;8216;clone8217;8217; hair from DNA.

Hairogenics promises to keep your hair safe and secure in its vault underneath a Portland, Oregon hair salon 8212; vacuum-sealed in waterproof packages and stored in a darkened, temperature-controlled environment to protect it from light and moisture. Oregon was selected for the facility site because its soil has large amounts of clay, a material cited as a good natural preservative for human DNA material.

8216;8216;One of the problems is that everything destroys hair, the sun, the air, the oxygen, the heat,8217;8217; Blaylock said. 8216;8216;We were looking for a very stable environment,8217;8217; he added.

Hairogenics has already signed up some 200 clients for its service, which costs 50 for the initial sample plus an additional 10 annual storage fee. After just 100,000 in start-up costs, Blaylock said he saw a big future for the company 8212; noting that the vault facility is currently designed to hold up to 800,000 samples.

Hair loss experts agreed that technology to clone human hair could well be developed within the next five to 10 years. But some expressed doubts over the Hairogenics approach, noting that most balding heads retain at least some hair that could eventually be cloned, making stored hair superfluous.

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Officials at the Male Pattern Baldness Research, a Florida-based group that compiles information on the causes and treatments for baldness, said the hair vault would probably be 8216;8216;lucrative but unnecessary.8217;8217;

Hayes Gladstone, director of the division of dermatologic surgery at Stanford Medical Center, said living hair 8212; no matter how elderly 8212; might end up being more useful than a bag of 20-year-old clippings.

8216;8216;As long as the hair is alive there should be DNA there to use,8217;8217; Gladstone said. 8216;8216;You are looking for functional DNA, and that is best found in living hair.8217;8217;

Blaylock said his underground storage facility would ensure that clients8217; healthiest, thickest hair is preserved for future cloning.

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8216;8216;Do you want the shiny, healthy, exciting young hair, or do you want the grayish older stuff?8217;8217; Blaylock said.

He said his company offered balding people a real option for hair preservation in a market full of snake oil salesmen peddling dubious treatments for hair loss. 8216;8216;At least we are not selling anything fake. We8217;re not saying 8216;take this and if you are lucky you will grow hair on your back,8217;8217;8217; Blaylock said. 8216;8216;We8217;re saying we will save your hair until science can come up with a way to clone it. But there are no guarantees.8217;8217;

Reuters