The symptoms are the problem.
The suffering and loss of function are the problem.
Sure, total causal knowledge and a perfect treatment would be nice. But until we have that, ignoring partial solutions in the name of medical research purity would be deeply irresponsible.
We won't get it if we never bother to look for it.
I'm not arguing for cruelty. These articles make the front page of HN precisely because our current approach is so broken that people find the results horrifying.
But active diagnoses, treatment attempts, and tracking of patient responsiveness, are indispensable to medical research.
And it took less than a minute to Google up an overview of recent research progress along many avenues for cluster headaches, as an example:
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2020-059577.long
I think you can stop worrying that medicine has to make dire choices between best treatment efforts today vs. finding better treatments for tomorrow.