Dr. Chris Palmer
speaker
2,040 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 3 Jul
Dr. Chris Palmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So...
That's really the way most of medicine actually has developed is serendipitous observations.
That if we do, if we give this medicine or if we give this plant or this substance to people...
It can be helpful.
It can reduce symptoms, even though we had no clue how or why it worked.
Like we were using opioids like heroin and other opiates for pain relief for, again, centuries without really understanding how or why it works.
So same too in the mental health field, as you mentioned, like the first antidepressant was actually a tuberculosis treatment and the people in the tuberculosis wards were giving these people this treatment, but noticing that some of them had had preexisting depression and all of a sudden they were happier.
And they're like, wow, I wonder if this would help those patients over on that psych ward.
And maybe it would help them too.
And sure enough, they did.
They didn't know how or why they worked.
The assumption wasn't that people with depression also had tuberculosis.
the assumption was that this tuberculosis medicine is somehow doing something.
Like even some of the hair loss medications that men take, that was serendipitous.
They were blood pressure medicines initially.
And then, oh, wow, men are growing hair.
Let's use it as a hair loss kind of method instead.
Unfortunately, it is unsettling because you would think that in 2026, we have a lot more science and rigor
But unfortunately, and we're getting there, we're definitely getting there.
And I don't want to discount all of the progress that we've had in neuroscience and biological sciences and healthcare.
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