It's not a very insightful one. It's just trafficking in lazy cynicism.
We actually have had progress in recent history. Hair transplants have improved, dutasteride is a lot more common, you can get RU58851 pretty easily, and there are a greater diversity of minoxidil formulations out there. Stemoxydine is a relatively new treatment for hair loss, works according to some people, I have not looked into it though.
In the next couple years, we might hear about polichem's topical finasteride, which is a legit effort as it's going through phase III trials. The italian company is trying that PGE1+equol formulation that could come out in 2017.
Within five or six years each of seti, bimatoprost, cb0301, sm04554 will be on the market if they pass their trials. That's where the "five years" comes from. Though note that we have had actual activity: we now know with good confidence that at least three of those compounds work, so it's worth getting into a group buy should they become available.
That's a decent level of activity. I doubt that the same could have been written in 2001.
