The cure for hair loss may have already been found. There are two laboratories in Japan working on two different types of hair loss cures, both of which have the potential to generate an unlimited amount of hair and have shown preliminary success.

Dr. Takashi Tsuji in Japan devised a way to generate infinitely many hairs for implantation using stem cells, rather than transplanting a finite amount of candidate hairs from the back of the scalp. Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido also entered into a partnership with Replicel and is working on its own stem cell treatment, which involves the injection of millions of the precursors to hair cells and does not require any labor-intensive transplantation. https://www.folliclethought.com/ultimate-guide-to-hair-regen...

Dr. Tsuji announced that the Japanese drug regulator granted him an accelerated path to regulatory approval. He might have a product on the market some time next year for around $250,000, with the price declining over time. Shiseido/Replicel's treatment is in an earlier stage of development, but would probably be cheaper.

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All that being said, I disagree that these efforts are "an exploitation of male vanity." First off, the development of a hair loss cure is not preventing the development of other drugs. If Dr. Tsuji's team of let's say 30 people were working on a cure for Alzheimer's, I don't think we would be any closer to curing that disease. In fact, a hair loss cure could do several useful things for the stem cell industry. It could generate useful insights into the development and application of stem cell differentiation and proliferation technologies. Additionally, a hair loss cure could normalize the use of stem cells on a scale never seen before. Furthermore, stem cell expertise is somewhat fungible, and widespread hair loss treatment via stem cells should increase the stem cell scientist labor pool, hastening the arrival of additional stem cell treatments.

I think it's arbitrary to divide medical treatments into noble/useful and ignoble/vain/unnecessary. Each person has a different and unique identity. Some % of your identity is rooted in your physical sense of self. That percentage varies across people, with a variable sub-% assigned to each physical trait. Sure, identity changes, but a painful phenomenon, something akin to cognitive dissonance, can occur: psychologically, you might never move on from the version of you with hair, and all of the positive traits you ascribe to hair, but your hair can nonetheless fall out. Your sense of self can be at odds with your physical appearance. Again, every person is unique. Not only do we have different brains and different circumstances in life, but physically, some people look much better bald than others.

On a societal level, I believe we should refrain from deriding a hair loss cure, or anything like it, as vain. Imagine someone who is disappointed with his new thinning/bald appearance. His family and friends strongly discourage him from "wasting" money on a "vain" cure. "I think you look fine, and looks don't matter for you anyway! Seriously, women don't care." If that delays or prevents him from getting his hair situation treated, then, tragically, society is prolonging his stress associated with hair loss. That is counterproductive. He won't get it out his head. He'll just further internalize the stress. For society, that's one fewer happy, fully productive person.

There are also tangible consequences for balding. There was a study that showed one group of women pictures of men with hair, and another group of women pictures of the same men without hair. These women were surveyed beforehand, and almost all of them said hair doesn't matter much. Their revealed preferences showed otherwise. Not only were the men with hair rated as more attractive, but they were also rated as more confident, wealthier, and better potential fathers, things that are orthogonal to scalp hair.

Lastly, actual vanity is a two-way street. It will exist so long as differential treatment based on physical traits exists, which is to say, forever and always. No one, literally no one, lacks subconcious bias based on physical traits.