The oncologist deals with the consequences of the observation: communicate with the patient, gives advices on treatments, makes a therapy plan, deals with families, answer to their questions, takes the hit when the relatives think that the solution is not good enough or an Indian shaman could cure everything with snake's poison.

Snowden have done good, but escaped from the consequences of his actions.

A position that made everything he's done questionable

Had he faced a trial, even the most unfair of trials, would have put him in the position of being at least true to the values he was trying to protect.

Question the authority, suffer the consequences.

Question the authority, go to Russia is not what generally the public opinion accepts as "honest".

There is much to say also about who leaked the data but didn't protect the source.

The identity of deep throat has been made public after Nixon was already dead for years and Mark Felt was already an old man suffering from dementia.