I have always considered some of that as practice for the eventual patient who may actually be helped. All those ecmo treatments on doomed elderly covid patients is good practice for when a 12yo kid with hope of survival needs the proceedure. Over the decades, hail mary treatments at end of life (radiation/chemo etc) eventually trickled down to become practical treatments for everyone. Appendectomies were likely debated as painful end-of-life treatments by those who first attempted them.