Ethical subroutine Ethical subroutines were a set of subroutines by which artificial lifeforms , like Lieutenant Commander Data or Lore , and holograms , like The Doctor , determined what was ethically right and wrong . ( ; ; ) Although Lore was Noonian Soong ' s first successful android , he had difficulty adapting to the ethical subroutines that Soong created to guide his behavior and interaction with Human s , forcing Soong to begin work on Data instead . This left Lore increasingly bitter when he learned that there was no real difference between the two of them and his inability to adapt actually made him the " inferior " model . In 2369 , Lore disabled Data ' s ethical subroutines and made him perform dangerous experiments on the Borg and Geordi La Forge . With no moral obligation to his friend , Data no longer cared if he hurt La Forge , with matters being made worse as Lore had managed to work out a way to make Data experience emotions while only allowing him to experience negative ones . This made him bitter and vengeful towards his former friends , as he was only able to focus on their negative emotional impact on him without fully appreciating the good experiences they had shared . Using a Borg interlink transceiver they took from a damaged drone , Captain Jean - Luc Picard and Deanna Troi were able to generate a Kedion pulse that created interference in Data ' s positronic net and caused it to reset his subroutines to normal ; although Data was still only experiencing negative emotions , he was once again able to choose whether or not to act on them . ( ) When Data sustained damage after discovering evidence of the Son ' a attempt to move the Ba ' ku , the damage caused his memory loss fail - safe system to activate , putting his ethical subroutines in direct control and leaving him in a state where the only thing he knew was right and wrong . This caused him to automatically act to protect the Ba ' ku from the Son ' a and the Federation who threatened them – unable even to distinguish between the Federation officers involved in the plan and his friends and colleagues on the " Enterprise " – until Picard and Worf were able to capture him and shut him down long enough to be repaired . ( " " ) . Aboard the in 2375 , The Doctor developed a feedback loop between his cognitive and ethical subroutines after making a subjective decision which cost the life of a crewmember , Ahni Jetal , having " allowed " her to die when she and Ensign Harry Kim were both injured by the same alien weapon ; The Doctor was only able to save one of them in the time available before the weapon ' s effects would kill them both , and elected to save Kim simply because he knew him better . As a result , he began to have a " mental breakdown " of sorts , berating himself and his abilities as a doctor and blaming himself for Jetal ' s death , his original programming to make the most pragmatic decision in a difficult situation involving multiple patients at odds with the personality he had developed and the personal connections he had formed since his activation . The crew initially decided to deal with this problem by erasing The Doctor ' s memory of Jetal and the entire incident , but when the memories resurfaced again after The Doctor discovered evidence of the surgery he had performed on Kim , a conversation with Seven of Nine prompted Janeway to decide to let The Doctor deal with the memories and try to work them out for himself , acknowledging that they couldn ' t help The Doctor become a person only to treat him as a machine when it was easier . ( ) The crew of the disabled their EMH ' s ethical subroutines so that he would not object to killing nucleogenic lifeform s to increase the " Equinox " s warp power . In late 2375 , with their EMH " hiding " on " Voyager " , the " Equinox " crew also disabled The Doctor ' s ethical subroutines , and , in his altered state , he extracted information from Seven of Nine ' s Borg implants . After his ethical subroutines were restored , The Doctor apologized to Seven , but she assured him she bore him no ill will , and offered to help him modify his program so that future attempts to tamper with it would be much more difficult . ( )