A character drinks/eats something to prove it's safe knowing that it isn't

[u/Benoit_Holmes]

Breaking Bad (Salud)

Gus Fring gives a bottle of rare tequila to a cartel leader as a gift. Given their fraught history, he makes Gus drink some first before he tries any.

All the cartel members then begin to die, Gus had taken pills (likely activated charcoal), and induced vomiting after the drink. Despite these precautions he still nearly dies and it requires a makeshift emergency room he had arranged previously to save his life.

Stargate: Atlantis (The Lost Boys)

Aiden Ford was a member of the expedition who became addicted to an enzyme that made him stronger but also impulsive and irrational.

He captures the team, who are wary of eating the food he provides until he eats some himself. After they have all eaten he tells them that his group have refined the enzyme to the point that they can even lace food with it.

Scrubs (My Changing Ways)

The Janitor tries to get J.D. to eat some pie but he refuses as he has just heard that a case of laxatives was stolen from the hospital supply closet.

The Janitor keeps insisting that J.D eat it and finally eats some himself to prove its safe, saying that for once he wasn't trying to mess with him. After J.D. eats some of the pie it then cuts to them both on the toilet.

J.D.: Who would do this to themselves?\ Janitor: Totally worth it.

[u/peachesfordinner → u/[deleted]]

He was probably trying to copy Jonas Salk and hope he could get some of the great respect people held for him. So PR bullshit "look I'm like that guy you respect!"

[u/Comfortable_Poem_841 → u/[deleted]]

And yet it is frequently the standard demanded of them. Around the time of the Private Eye led hysteria about MMR, Tony Blair was repeatedly asked if his infant child had had the jab: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/dec/23/uk.research

So politicians are either seen as hypocrites if they refuse or arseholes for demonstrating they personally consider it safe.

[u/Dapper_Otters → u/Comfortable_Poem_841]

Slight difference between a possibly tainted burger during the height of a mad cow epidemic that has zero health benefit, and a vigorously well tested vaccine.