That is basically the textbook definition of unethical medical practice, so unquestionably far over the line of acceptable practice that you would have to be willfully ignorant to defend it, and they think it would be exciting if it were not banned.
This is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of what was said. First of all, it's really hard to get malpractice here, as consent is implied (unless you'd think he'd purposefully do a bad or sloppy job). You could say it's irresponsible, and that argument holds more water, but when folks are in these terrible situations (i.e. terminally ill, etc.), a strong argument could also be that it's morally impermissible to disallow them to partake in such experimental treatments.
In any case, it's an interesting moral conundrum, akin to abortion or euthanasia.
We allow compassionate testing of therapies that might allow you to live longer because the alternative is an ugly death.
Consent is never ever ever implied and you don't have to deliberately do a poor job to be liable.
Just not having good evidence of the therapy is liable to improve their lot and doing it anyway or failing to impart an accurate picture of the risks because you don't know enough to do so.
How can you possibly have informed consent without the same info that you hope to glean?
Calling many of these therapies "compassionate" is a bit of a stretch after you learn about their side effects...