A doctor who made some important discoveries had an idea about using infection to treat cancer. He didn't bother with the proper process, he just went and did it on three patients. 2 of them died about as quickly as they would have anyway. We don't know if they were in more pain or not. 1 of them lived for about a year, and that person's relative described that year as very low quality of life. It's possible that the treatment kept this person alive, in this awful condition, much longer than she would have lived without the treatment.

He did this because he thought he was doing the right thing. It's clear to most people that he wasn't doing the right thing, and after he was discovered all the investigators were very clear that he'd done the wrong thing.

That story is contrasted with a team who did the right thing: they noticed a plausible mechanism of action; they gathered evidence; they got permissions; they did animal studies.

I don't mind the length of the article, but I agree that it wandered around a bit.