This one of the reasons I always preferred Janeway to Picard in Star Trek. Picard goes on to defend Data's rights when he's effectively just a machine Maddox wants to take apart in The Measure of a Man. Janeway by contrast never really treats the EMH as human throughout the series, even while other crew members start to. She humors him, yes, but she always seems to remind him that he is, in fact, a machine.

I have no idea why I ever thought that mattered, I just felt like it was somehow important.