reversal

A "model politician" in this day and age seems to refer to one Silvio Berlusconi

I believe this is a case for Dr. Jay Freireich who was considered a barbarian and labeled as a pariah in the medical community because he gave out experimental treatments on childhood leukemia patients who had no chance of survival outside of a few months. Mind you this treatment is literally poisoning the patient and hoping the cancer dies while the patient still has a thread of life remaining. There was also a very good chance that the chemicals would end up doing the job the cancer was already doing.

He was able to save very few of his patients from the same end, as well as developing what would become modern chemotherapy that's saving countless more cancer patients today.

So a better question is: is the situation we're presented with so grim that we're willing to use a method that's just as deadly as the disease/injury but has a glimmer of hope for survival?