He sees unnecessary risks to include displeasing his superiors for grounding crew and being shipped off to the Pacific Ocean, water and its ability to drown a man, and having to fly in a claustrophobic aircraft, which he likens to "climbing back into the womb".
He generally shows little care for the way they run the tent, basically leaving the growing bureaucracy to decide who is ill enough to be sent to hospital, without reference to medical expertise.
This climaxes when Gus and Wes pronounce Doc Daneeka dead at the medical tent against the obvious fact that he is standing alive in front of them.
Doc Daneeka was not on board the plane, but had an arrangement with McWatt to falsely record his name on the manifest so he could collect flight pay.
During Milo's bombing of the airbase and the death of Snowden, Doc Daneeka shows the compassion for others he lacks throughout the rest of the novel.
As the war effort drafts in more medical personnel, Doc Daneeka's surgery booms, especially with increased kickbacks from the local pharmacies and abortion referrals from the beauty parlors.
This lucrative business comes to an end when the military catch up with him after he lies to the draft board about having one leg amputated and being bed-ridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis.
Doc Daneeka appears as a petulant man, feeling beaten by the military for losing his advantage of being one of few doctors around back home.
As a military doctor, Doc Daneeka has the ability to choose who of the pilots can be grounded from needing to fly more missions, and who must continue.
Because of Colonel Cathcart's competing attitude of increasing the missions every time the men meet the requirement, pilots with successful fruition grovel for Doc Daneeka to allow them grounding.
He also vainly attempts to remove himself from the military effort; he regularly approaches Gus and Wes, his two nurses, to perform routine physical and check his temperature, which invariably remains a constant, sub-average 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Gus and Wes assist Doc Daneeka and take the responsibility for dealing with the majority of people who visit the medical tent where they have "succeeded in elevating medicine to an exact science".
Those with temperatures above 102 °F are sent to the hospital; those below 102° have their gums and toes painted purple with gentian violet solution and are given a laxative that is quickly disposed of in the bushes.
One day, while Yossarian explains his pitiful circumstances, Doc Daneeka becomes the first in the novel to detail the structured frameworking of what is formally known as "Catch-22"; a circular argument that prevents any of the men from removing themselves from combat: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.
Corporal Whitcomb develops the idea of writing and sending home form letters of condolence from Colonel Cathcart to those who died or went missing in combat.
His wife feels uncertain after acquiring the first and asks if it is possible the military made a mistake, but is assured that the letter is simply the work of a "sadistic and psychotic forger".
The book makes note that she and her children move to a new place; she leaves no forwarding address, and no further reference of her existence throughout the rest of the story.
Doc Daneeka's last appearance in the story is in his tent with Yossarian and Chief White Halfoat, who is about to go up to the hospital to die of pneumonia.
His last speech implies that he has accepted that he is bureaucratically a dead man: Yossarian and Chief White Halfoat ignore him, acting as if he is not there.
The government goes so far to shield the military through political correctness on paper trails as to ignore the blatant, visual proof that Doc Daneeka did not die.