Yes. No matter what the treatment might be, someone always has to be the first human it's tried on.
Even if we did have good digital simulations, someone would still have to be the first human to get it "for real". That's just the nature of things. Someone has to be the first patient of a new heart surgeon. Someone has to be the first person to hire a newly-minted PE to design a bridge that might fail and kill thousands. And so on.
We mitigate these risks to the best of our ability by ensuring rigorous training of doctors and PEs, and stuff like animal testing and computer simulations, but someone still has to be first.
It sounds like this patient was well aware of the risks, and opted to get the procedure since otherwise his death would be a certainty.
Even if we did have good digital simulations, someone would still have to be the first human to get it "for real". That's just the nature of things. Someone has to be the first patient of a new heart surgeon. Someone has to be the first person to hire a newly-minted PE to design a bridge that might fail and kill thousands. And so on.
We mitigate these risks to the best of our ability by ensuring rigorous training of doctors and PEs, and stuff like animal testing and computer simulations, but someone still has to be first.
It sounds like this patient was well aware of the risks, and opted to get the procedure since otherwise his death would be a certainty.