---Synopsis:
The Doctor's program is stolen and sold to a medical facility on a world where the quality of medical care doled out to patients is based on the patient's perceived worth to society.
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By Richie Vest
Nits: Well this episode started out slow but had a better a second half. As for nits i am sorry but i dont have any but i know you folks do.
Join us next week when Barclay returns just in time for sweeps.
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By Anonymous on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 7:00 pm:
Best scene
Janeway: "I already have a man"
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By Jason on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:01 pm:
Oh Joy of Joys!!!! Voyager does have a warp drive!!! They even end the episode with it!!!!!
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By Lee Jamilkowski on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:04 pm:
"I bet she gives good oo-mox!" I can't wait to see next week's episode.
The Doctor is really growing... he did what he had to do. I saw no problem with that, unlike "Living Witness", which left me in doubt about the Doctor's actions. A good "message episode"... we haven't seen one of those in a while.
I agree, the Janeway and Tuvok scene was hilarious.
And it appears that Harry and Tom do use multiple holoprograms in the same year... last week the movie theater, this week the hockey. Nice to hear about Nausicaans, too.
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By Newt on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:30 pm:
Playing hockey against Nausicaans sounds like suicide to me. I wouldn't be surprised if those guys didn't wear pads or helmets.
Interesting episode. A little heavy handed on the message part. But enjoyable.
As for next week, looks like fun; but really who approves these things? I hate to see previews that make the trekker side of me hang my head in disust.
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By Jason on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:38 pm:
I just realised something...
Another episode has gone by with almost no 7.
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By PaulG on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:39 pm:
Ah, the HMO episode. With aliens named "Denali" no less. Egad.
Is it just me or did the flying hospital hover above the city? Wouldn't that block out the sun? Maybe this is supposed to be the Laputa episode.
Janeway is complaining about security? What ship has she been on for the past seven years? She apparently does not even remember the last episode where she let a prisoner with full access to the security codes have a communicator in the brig. OK, that's the last straw. She is incompetent. There is nothing left to be said about it.
I am guessing the Denali have transporter technology. Otherwise, it is not possible for the Doc (who is a hologram) to be transported around the hospital with his mobile emitter (which is NOT a hologram) attached. However, it did not look like a transporter beam to me.
Janeway sure became frustrated very quickly with the Denali voicemail. I generally do not throw my hands in the air after fifteen seconds. She was acting like she KNEW that she was not going to get through to a live person before she possibly could.
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By Benjamin Daniel Cohen (Bcohen) on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:40 pm:
Very good episode. This whole season is shaping up to be very good, in my opinion. I wish Kenneth Biller was heading up the new series.
The nits:
How was the doctor's mobile emitter being transfered along with him when his program was hooked up to the alien computer? Was there a transporter involved? If so, that would be a pretty wasteful drain on resources (Not that the hospital would have cared much).
Not a nit, just an observation: Did anybody else think that when Neelix entered the brig to deliver the meal to Gahr(sp?), that he and Tuvok were going to play good cop bad cop? Too bad they didn't. It would have been funny.
Next weeks ep:
I assumed that the term "oo-mox", like many other Trek words, was no longer in the writers' vocabulary. I stand corrected (and pleasantly surprised). Good work, writers!
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By Benjamin Daniel Cohen (Bcohen) on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 8:50 pm:
One more thing: Early on, Doc talks about contacting his medical staff. Would that be the Voyager medical staff, the blue suited guys we've been seeing recently? If so, then why does Tom still have to work in sickbay?
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By D.W. March on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 10:45 pm:
I thought this was one of Voyager's better episodes. I laughed out loud when Janeway proclaimed her love for Tuvok.
Nits:
The administrator's computer looks quite like a Starfleet terminal.
A couple of people have already mentioned the doctor's emitter moving around with him.
The best line that never made it into the episode: The doctor to Seven- "I'd like you to check my program for errors. I made an addition to my program a few years ago and I'd like you to check and see if it still works."
How many backup doctors does Voyager have? They lost one a couple of years back and now when the con man steals theirs, he manages to replace it with some kind of trainer module.
Hilarious line: "I don't aspire to Borg ideals."
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By Strgzr 47 on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 11:08 pm:
Too bad Captain Kirk wasn't still around, he would find that Allocator and either blast it into a million pieces or confuse it to death.
Did we ever see Chellek (sp) on screen?
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By TomM on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 11:31 pm:
How many backup doctors does Voyager have? They lost one a couple of years back and now when the con man steals theirs, he manages to replace it with some kind of trainer module.
The training module is not a fully functioning holodoc, that's why it was detected so easily. It was more like a free demo version of new software package or a movie trailer: just enough to make you realize that you want it, but no truly useful functionality.
Did we ever see Chellek (sp) on screen?
Chelik (sp?) was the administrator that the Doctor injected with the virus. The main reason that he was unavailable when Janeway contacted the Allocator was that it thought he was a different person.
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By Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 11:31 pm:
Slightly annoying that they didn't even try to explain Gahr's overcoming their security measures.
That hospital ship looked familiar, but I'm not certain where I saw anything like it before. (Star Wars, perhaps?)
Amazing that women all over the galaxy tend to look like women & even wear low-cut dresses.
It looked like the Brig's force field came down as the guard was still reaching for the control.
Not really wise of Tuvok to question Neelix's tactic while within earshot of Gahr.
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By KAM, part 2 on Wednesday, November 01, 2000 - 11:32 pm:
Neelix says that he overheard Tuvok threaten to use a Mind Meld. So Neelix was planning this trick regardless of what Tuvok would do?
Of course, Gahr is an alien and Neelix really had no idea what medical effects Talaxiam wormroot would have on a member of Gahr's species, but when was the last time a writer worried about that on Voyager?
Also the Doctor injects Chellik with an alien virus & Chellik reacts the same as the Danali.
While it did have a 'feel good' ending, with the patients going to be moved to Level Blue, the real problem(s) is(are) still ongoing.
This planet has a resource problem.
This one hospital ship (others are implied) will be hoarding resources.
Chellik will no doubt quit when he's healthy again.
However, what does Voyager care as they are zipping through space without a second thought.
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By trekkerxphile on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 12:10 am:
Y'know, the last time a crewmember singlehandedly ignored the prime directive and tried to save a civilization all by himself that HE felt was bad, regardless of local customs and ethics, he was demoted and put in the brig for thirty days. Nothing happens to Doc. Was it all okay because he was kidnapped? Does that mean he's allowed to do whatever? Or is it just that Janeway likes him better than Paris? Or that he has no rank to take away?
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By Dustin Westfall on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 1:03 am:
While I agree this ep is overly preachy, it's also a gross exageration of the current system (Perhaps intentional, but worth noting). If anyone, EVER, hears of a patient being denied life saving medication so that someone else, who is perfectly healthy, can extend their life a few days, please contact your local authorities and/or media. That is grossly unethical.
Now that that is out of the way ...
How did Tuvok become a security officer? He has an unknown visitor on board, and he has no escort or monitoring? And how long was the Doctor gone before Tom and Harry found out he was missing? Did anyone notice if they mentioned that or not? And what was the training module doing with those PADDs? Just shuffling them around until someone walked in?
to be continued...
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By Dustin Westfall on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 1:04 am:
And now, Part II ...
I do sympathize with the so-called villians of this ep. They are stuck trying to ration limited medical supplies to a society that, if I understood the dialogue correctly, was on the brink of ruin. While I think we all disagree with the methodology used here (see my first paragraph), it is a tough, thankless job to say the least.
I do applaude this episode for one thing, though: the final scene. While they could have done like MASH, where Hawkeye (a couple of times) performed unneccessary surgery, with little to no remorse, to save the lives of others, they instead had the Doctor questioning himself in the end, as to whether or not what he did was ethical. Bravo!
Next Week: AGH! I hate sweeps. Not only do PAL, but they PAL so blatenly as to be almost unbelieveable. Barclay and Troi conspiring with the Ferengi to kidnap Seven??? Come on.
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By Dustin Westfall on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 1:08 am:
Almost forgot one:
I don't think Janeway was frustrated at just the voice-mail like message when she threw up her arms. She had been looking for the Doctor for a while, dealing with all sorts of oddball people (Anyone else find the jokes in the sub-plot strained, considering the seriousness of the main plot?), and, after finally finding him, all the computer would tell her is that the person she has to talk to is unavailable.
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By Brian Lombard on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 5:17 am:
Just an observation. The number on Harry's ice hockey uniform was 7. Hmmmm.
What happened to Doc's hippocratic oath? He wouldn't harm Tuvix to benefit a greater good.
Cool effect - Voyager buzzing out of warp at the last second and locking the tractor beam on Gar's ship.
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By Alleycat11 on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 7:14 am:
I liked this one! They had pretty good effects! Maybe they realized that they should get some fresh external shots, rather than going through the "Battlestar Galactica - Cylon Ship exploding using the same shot" syndrome...
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By Anonymous on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 7:16 am:
Dustin: as to your request that we inform the authorities when lifesaving drugs are withheld in favor of life-extending drugs, we here in the West consume thousands of dollars worth of anti-depressants, Viagra, and other "quality of life" drugs when people are dying of diarrhea in the Third World.
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By Dustin Westfall on Thursday, November 02, 2000 - 10:15 am:
Anon, that's not quite the same thing. While any preventable death is tragic, this episode, as well as my statement, dealt with a different situation. Since I can think of no parallels off the top of my head, I'll use a theoretical example:
Darn Server errors. Example upcoming.
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By Brian Lombard on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 6:54 am:
When Doc first arrives in the hospital, he asks for a hypospray, yet no one knows what a hypospray is. Later, he tells Chellek that he might as well put a phaser to a patient's head, and Chellek seems to know what a phaser is.
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By TomM Pt1 on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:01 am:
What happened to Doc's hippocratic oath? He wouldn't harm Tuvix to benefit a greater good.
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By TomM Pt2 on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:02 am:
In fact he brought up the Oath in this episode, when, just after refusing to cooperate, the critical patients are wheeled in and he immediately reverses himself and starts treating them.
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By TomM Pt3 on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:03 am:
And the Oath is interwoven into his ethical subroutines, which is why he was hoping that Seven would find a malfunction.
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By TomM Pt4 on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:04 am:
Unfortunately, as he discovered, real life, and real life-and-death decisions, are not simple black-or-white yes/no propositions.
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By TomM Pt5 on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:05 am:
He has grown beyond his programming, and in a way he is not sure is for the better. He is becoming more human.
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By TomM comment on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:07 am:
D**n Server errors! I've been trying to post this for a day and a half.
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By Hans Thielman on Friday, November 03, 2000 - 7:29 am:
What happened to the revised sickbay greeting that Zimmerman installed in the EMH Mark 1?
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By Dustin Westfall on Sunday, November 12, 2000 - 2:48 am:
Now that Nit-Central's back, I can finally post this.
Anon, that's not quite the same thing. While any preventable death is tragic, this episode, as well as my statement, dealt with a different situation. Since I can think of no parallels off the top of my head, I'll use a theoretical example:
Say Drug A can be used to treat fatal disease B. Drug A has also been shown to have life-extending effects in normally healthy people. Where should the drug be used more? Most doctors will agree that it should be used to save lives, when possible. If anyone is denied Drug A so that someone else, who is healthy, can recieve it, their family would have a good civil, if not criminal, case against the Doctor/Hospital/HMO.
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By KAM on Sunday, November 12, 2000 - 3:18 am:
Life-extending medicine is given to those who have valuable jobs. However, how long will these people work in those jobs? Is it really beneficial to add a couple of years to a person's life when logically they will have been fired, or retired, years earlier?
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By Shane Tourtellotte on Sunday, November 12, 2000 - 4:21 pm:
Finally! I can post my nits, and only eleven days late. :-)
Tuvok states that the high-grade iridium they got from Gahr has a short half-life. Iridium is a real element, not some bit of technobabble, and it has stable isotopes, meaning no half-life.
Was anyone else surprised that they used Tuvok for the "I already have a man" scene, when using Chakotay would have gotten a lot more tongues wagging? It's just a missed opportunity, I tell ya.
For such a busy hospital, the patient numbers we hear(B1, B3, R12) are awfully low. I'd expect numbers in the thousands, especially in the Red sector.
It's official: Neelix's cooking is now recognized as an effective torture method.
Many have commented on this already, but I'll add my two cents. While I applaud the writers for having The Doctor hope his actions were due to a malfunction, the fact is that, as others have noted, he's been in such a situation before and did not act this way. In "Tuvix", he would not perform the separation that would kill Tuvix, and restore Tuvok and Neelix to life, because he was bound to do no harm. _No_ harm. What changed? Did the greater number of lives involved pass some threshold that overrode his Hippocratic restrictions? Or are we to assume that he has "grown" in the past four-plus years, moving beyond such rigid ethics? I wish we understood this better.
Or perhaps the point is that we're supposed to wonder.
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By Kristina Kim on Sunday, November 12, 2000 - 7:22 pm:
Regarding the ethical uses of medicine around the world, there is actually a lack of medicine for major preventable diseases everywhere. For example, there if there were to be an outbreak of polio, or other major contagious disease, we wouldn't have enoughe medicine to treat everyone. But we have plenty of viagra and claratin to go around.
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By ScottN on Sunday, November 12, 2000 - 8:14 pm:
Shane,
I thought it was "Euridium", not Iridium.
Tuvok was "at hand" (pun intended).
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By Dustin Westfall on Monday, November 13, 2000 - 11:15 am:
Kristina,
That's just what Anon was saying on the last page. That is what I was trying to say was different.
Yours is a much more complex situation. The allocation of resources for producing current and developing new drugs wasn't really the issue in this episode. In this episode, they had limited supplies of a single drug with two basic effects: curing a disease in dying patients, and extending the life of healthy patients.
This episode was as much about Social Engineering, i.e. placing a value on a person based on their current position/likely effect on society, as it was about medical ethics. That, I think, was simply the setting used so that they could harness the Doctor's abilities.
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By Shane Tourtellotte on Monday, November 13, 2000 - 12:26 pm:
ScottN,
I switched to my TV's closed-captioning to check. They spelled it "iridium", just like the element.
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By Anonymous on Monday, November 13, 2000 - 2:30 pm:
How come everyone knows how to use the Doc's holo-emitter, even in a few seconds, without being taught? I thought this was 29th century technology.
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By KAM on Tuesday, November 14, 2000 - 12:26 am:
IFOS
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By PaulG on Tuesday, November 14, 2000 - 11:48 am:
I will throw my two cents in on the medication allocation.
The allocation of this said medication is apparently based on utilitarian grounds. It is distributed in such a way to maximize the benefit of society. (Please note that I do not necessarily agree with that ethical standard. I am just pointing out the aliens' motivation.)
Obviously, there are a lot of details we do not know. We do not know the alien lifespan, the expected working life for either patient, the actual shortage of medication (if any), the scarcity and importance of the skills of the engineer and so on. Also of great importance, we do not know the gender differences - perhaps females live longer or whatnot. However, this is what we do know:
- The boy appears to young. Approximately a half dozen treatments will cure his disease; otherwise he will die.
- The woman appears to be older than the boy but still young. She needs DAILY treatments of the medication to possibly extend her life by 40% (it could be less). She is not in medical danger.
I find it hard to believe that this rationing system makes sense. The boy only needs a small amount of medicine for a total cure and he has most of his working life ahead of him. In comparison, the woman needs massive doses to add to her lifespan. For this to make sense, the marginal gain from the added years of the engineer would have to be more valuable than the boy's entire life. IMHO, either her skills are immensely valuable or his skills are worth practically nothing or both. I am doubtful of all of those possibilities.
What also is troubling is that IIRC, the alien doctor states that the injections to increase the lifespan are prescribed for all patients in their care. Does the engineer continue to get injections after she goes back to work? From the dialogue, this does not appear to be the case. If that is true, we have the boy's life in comparison to a partial treatment that should have negligible effect. Assuming that there are no special circumstances that we know of, either he is better off dead (as far as society is concerned) or the aliens' equations and computers could use a review.
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By Adam Bomb on Thursday, November 16, 2000 - 6:45 pm:
This episode was a great dig at HMO's, managed care and the caste system we have established for medical care in this country. Makes me glad I belong to a PPO, especially with my medical expenses for this year.
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By Matthew on Friday, December 01, 2000 - 3:21 pm:
Did anyone else notice that when the allocator 'transfered' the doctor, his mobile emmiter dematerilized as well? Is this some sort of hologram/transporter device?
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By Tricorder on Wednesday, March 21, 2001 - 8:45 pm:
Matthew, I caught the rerun tonight and wondered the same thing.
I also have a nit regarding the mobile emitter. How is it everyone knows exactly how high to hold it so it will appear on the same spot of the Doctor's sleeve every time? Second, how come the hospital wasn't swindled by Gahr like everyone else? (Then again, considering the chaos the Doctor caused, maybe it was). Third, I thought that one drug was overdone as a cure-all for nearly every disease.
I liked this episode. It wasn't as preachy as I expected. The plot twists were interesting (but the idea of turning the cheap hospital administrator into a patient had been done a year earlier on "Chicago Hope"). The sequences of Janeway getting exacerbated while trying to track down Gahr reminded me of how Kirk got sometimes. This was reinforced when Tuvok stood over Janeway's shoulder, a la Spock.
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By Lance McCormick on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 11:45 am:
I find it hard to believe that the Doctor's young doctor friend (forgot the name, sorry) didn't anticipate the drugs treating the Red patients would be noted on their accounts.
Secondly, the "daily injection" system is seriously flawed- people with diabetes, for example, are allowed to give themselves injections (as I understand it). Plus, think about the time it takes for the patient to travel to the hospital, get the injection, and return. Daily visits don't seem all that practical.
Anti-nit: considering that the patient numbers were recycled, the low numbers made sense to me.
Was the actual half-life of the iridium mentioned? I seem to recall it was very short, as in, a few days or something, but I could easily be mistaken.
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By Jessica on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:30 pm:
I, too, thought the Allocator could use a tune up. The society needed good, functional, intelligent people but it had designated a very bright boy who had taught himself a lot of medicine as "expendable." Even granting their premise, that was foolish. We never did find out how troubled the society was--how short of resources; I would have liked to--it could have added another layer if the doctor had seen _why_ they had chosen the measures they'd chosen.
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By Jwb52z on Thursday, March 28, 2002 - 8:11 pm:
Jessica, that's what happens when you have a giant bureaucracy joined to a strict class system. You end up in a mess.
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By kingmatt on Wednesday, December 04, 2002 - 12:12 am:
I have a problem with the premise of the whole show. Assuming the decision to treat patients differently on the basis of their position in society because of a lack of resources, why excactly is it the blue collar workers who are suffering the consquences? The most 'usless' people in society certainly aren't them. Its all the service industry people i'd be consigning to red level. HR consultants, publicity people, managers. All completely useless. (I work in records myself, so my methods would put me on red level too) Let all the people who clean the bogs or pick fruit die and you'd soon be in trouble.
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By LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, December 04, 2002 - 11:32 am:
I think the premise may have been an allegory for the overall incompetence of bureaucracy.
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By Josh Gould-DS9 Moderator (Jgould) on Wednesday, December 04, 2002 - 6:53 pm:
A premise, I should add, that was explored with heavy-handedness.
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By constanze on Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - 5:48 am:
kingmatt,
because this system is an outgrow of the present 2-class-system which uses money/no money to establish treatment. And because this system was established by administrators/bureaucrats: would they really think of themselves as useless people? People doing manual, low-grade work are regarded as not important to society in most civilzed nations today - partly because if one person dies, the next can take over with mininmal training, as opposed to educated jobs like doctors or engineers, partly because many of these manual jobs have been delegated to machines/robots in the last decades anyway.
What I wondered about: Chellik said that resources are scare and mentions enviromental problems. But when the medication is requested, it looks as if its replicated, and the overall level of technology seen is very high. Why would the amount of medication be a problem? Anit-nit: it may not be a replicator, but some kind of transportation from central storage; it may be the attitude left-over from the time when medication was manufactured (and we all know how slowly bureaucracy changes).
I found the end a little bit too optimistic: even if Chellik now understands and changes his attitudes, he's said several times how his race (of bureaucrats?) was called by the natives to deal with the crisis, so one administrator changing his mind won't change the system - the doc would've needed to convince the leaders of this planet to abandond this system.
I still don't understand why a civilization with hovering space ship-technology would have a shortage of resources, or how enviromental problems are related to the resources of a ship-based hospital.
Dustin, are you telling me that in present-day US health system, expensive cancer medicine or similar is available to every patient, regardless if he can pay it or not? Isn't optimal care available only to people with enough money for private health insurance? ( I wonder why and when the present US system changed to the Federation ethics of free treatment for everybody. I've read several criticms of this so-called "socialzed" health care on boards around here.)
Or look at the pressure the US govt. is putting on third-world-countries to use expensive patented medicine from US pharma companies against AIDS, instead of cheap generica: the spread of AIDS in Africa is directly related to money.
Or look at the genetic diseases which are too "rare" to be profitable, so no research is done on them. In fact, the pharma companies admit openly that they rather research and test a new headache medicine, although there are already scores of them on the market, working perfectly, than research for a serious illness, because there is more profit to be made from millions with (imagined or stress-induced) headaches than saving people's life who suffer from real illnesses.
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By John A. Lang on Saturday, January 01, 2005 - 3:44 pm:
I agree with Janeway in this episode. Security was very lax regarding the alien visitor.
Not very Vulcan-like for Tuvok to be less than efficient.
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By John A. Lang on Saturday, January 08, 2005 - 9:12 pm:
On the same note, why doesn't the EMH have "Software Protection" like a firewall or something like that?
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By John-Boy on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 - 3:07 pm:
Gee I couldn't help but notice that no one here on show board 2 pointed out that Voyager was in WARP all throughout this episode, includeing right before the final scene in sickbay, when they were no doubt on a course towards Earth.
Why is it that you guys are quick to point out when they are in IMPULSE all through a show but not WARP?
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By LUIGI NOVI on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 - 3:10 pm:
Becuase unless there's a plot-related reason for it, it is expected for the ship to be at warp, in particular at the end of an episode when they're headed for home. It's odd, on the other hand, for it to be at impulse, which is why some of us point that out.
And I agree that the Doctor's program obviously should have some type of protection.
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By MikeC on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 - 10:34 am:
Moved some posts to the Dump. John-Boy, if these posts bother you so much, I suggest you ignore them rather than calling them insults.
"Cool effect - Voyager buzzing out of warp at the last second and locking the tractor beam on Gar's ship." Brian
There were a lot of cool effects in this ep, but I thought the visuals of Voyager looked cartoony at times. TPTB must have spent most of their cosmetic money on Gahr becasue all but one person in the hospital had none. The actor who played the alien that worked on the asteroid mine, which looked big enough to be classified as a planetoid IMO, played a Cardassian in TNG.
"the spread of AIDS in Africa is directly related to money." constanze
I don't think so, indirectly maybe. AIDS is spread in Africa because many of the people there aren't educated enough to understand how it's transmitted. Sure it costs money to send people with meds and knowledge of prevention over there but there's no cure and I doubt much safe sex is practiced in the whole continent.
I have a problem with the premise of the whole show. Assuming the decision to treat patients differently on the basis of their position in society because of a lack of resources, why excactly is it the blue collar workers who are suffering the consquences? The most 'usless' people in society certainly aren't them. Its all the service industry people i'd be consigning to red level. HR consultants, publicity people, managers. All completely useless. (I work in records myself, so my methods would put me on red level too) Let all the people who clean the bogs or pick fruit die and you'd soon be in trouble.
As Siskel & Ebert used to say to each other, you "missed the boat" in this episode because that was sort of the whole point. They had a medical bureaucracy that prioritized people based on social status rather than need.
Benjamin: How was the doctor's mobile emitter being transferred along with him when his program was hooked up to the alien computer? Was there a transporter involved?
This certainly wasn't the only post to point this out but it seemed pretty clear that a transporter was indeed involved to micro-manage the Doc's movements.
KAM: Chellik will no doubt quit when he's healthy again... Life-extending medicine is given to those who have valuable jobs. However, how long will these people work in those jobs? Is it really beneficial to add a couple of years to a person's life when logically they will have been fired, or retired, years earlier?
I don't think it very likely that Chellik would quit. He may attempt to alter the protocols but he's in a high position, possibly administrating all the medical ships; this whole incident will be forgotten in a month. As for your second point, I wondered the same thing! Arterial decay? How do they expect to survive as a society/species when the next generations are sick and dying?
John-boy: Gee I couldn't help but notice that no one here on show board 2 pointed out that Voyager was in WARP all throughout this episode
There were several people who mentioned this; plus aside from the final scene the ship wasn't warping toward the AQ, so if security did its job to begin with the standard complaint might've still applied.