How does the medic work in Pandemic - In the lab once a disease is cured?

Question

The In the Lab expansion requires you to move cubes into dishes in order to cure diseases and beat the game.

Once a disease have been cured, the "automatic" ability of the Medic is that all of the cured disease cubes are removed when he enters a city.

In the rule-set it is stated that the ability of the medic cannot move any cubes to the sample dishes.

I interpret this as once a disease is cured, the Medic can no longer move any cubes of that color to the dishes, because when he is done taking his move action, the city already has all the cubes removed, before the treat action could be taken.

Is this the correct interpretation of the rules?

Answer 1

Yes, your interpretation is correct.

From the rules for Pandemic In the lab:

A cube removed from the board by Events, the Containment Specialist’s ability, the Medic’s ability to automatically remove cured disease cubes, etc. may not be placed in a sample dish.

From the rules for Pandemic:

The Medic removes all cubes, not 1, of the same color when doing the Treat Disease action. If a disease has been cured , he automatically removes all cubes of that color from a city, simply by entering it or being there. This does not take an action

I could find nowhere in the rules that said the medic's ability was optional.