The research project operated by the Veterans Secretariat, which analyzes genetic data, has led to medical innovation. But the important steps for maintaining research are stopped.
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Billy Schuerman/Virginian Pilot/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
One of the world’s largest genetic databases consists of DNA data donated by more than a million retired military service staff for many years. This is part of the project operated by Veterans.
The initiative, called a million veteran program, is “a national crown gem,” and David Shulkin, a doctor who worked as a VA assistant in the first Trump administration.
Data in this project contributed to the study of genetics of anxiety and peripheral arteriosclerosis and caused hundreds of open papers. Researchers say that this repository has the potential to answer the health problems limited to only veterans, such as the most vulnerable to mental health problems after service and why it looks more vulnerable to cancer.
Shulkin said in an interview, “VA helps Veterans when they do research, but helps all Americans.”
Researchers say that this program is now in Limbo, and it is dangerous to collect other information such as genetic data and surveys and blood samples of Veterans.
“There is a cone of silence,” said Amy, an epidemiologist who was appointed VA as an employee. “We must make it survive.”
Gene data is tremendously complicated and requires a wide range of computing performance that VA does not have. Instead, I relied on partnerships with Energy Department, which provides supercomputers for research purposes.
At the end of April, DOUG Collins VA was released to Senator Richard Blumentshal, the leading Democratic Party of the Senate Veterans’ Military Business Committee, and according to the Democratic Democratic Party’s KFF HEALTH News, the agreement to approve the use of computers for genome projects has not been expired in September. It was maintained.
The spokesman of the two institutions did not reply to many requests. Other current and former employees within the institution that asked not to identify because of the fear of the Trump administration’s retaliation said that the important agreement would be updated.
One researcher called “key ingredients” to comput the “core ingredients” in the main development of health research, such as the discovery of the New Testament.
The researcher said the contract with the Energy Department should be extended over the next 10 years, the researchers said.
The Ministry of Justice pointed out about a million veteran program subsidies, which had caused “gradual” damage due to uncertainty. As she proceeded this year, she predicted that “people will feel it a lot.”
Maintaining the health of Veterans’ soldiers due to military experience raises another challenge compared to caring for civilians. Inspection of genes and clinical data in the program allows researchers to investigate questions that have violated Veterans for many years. For example, Shulkin quoted “a better diagnosis and a way to think about effective treatment for these toxic exposure” (e.g., a pit that is used to dispose of garbage at overseas military outposts and a pork like a post -traumatic stress disorder.
“The rest of the research community will not focus on Veterans, especially,” he said. But the VA community provided important discoveries to the world. 3 VA Research Institute The Nobel Prize was awarded, and the institution created the first pulse regulator. Its effort also helped to cause the boom of GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
However, I felt turbulence throughout the VA research company. Like other government scientific institutions, it became a buffet due to dismissal, contract cuts and cancellation research.
“The planned exam has not begun, there is a trial that is being discontinued, and the trial that has fallen due to the staff is an example or or not?” Senator Patty Murray, who presses Collins at the May hearing of the Senate’s Veterans Military Business Committee, said.
According to a document shared with the Senate Democratic Party of the Veterans’ Senate Democratic Party, the agency, which has a budget of about $ 1 billion in the research department in this fiscal year, has cut the infrastructure that supports scientific investigation. At least 37 research contracts have been canceled, including genome sequencing and libraries and biological statistics services. The department has canceled four contracts for cancer registrants of Veterans, creating potential gaps in national statistics.
Jobs also spend many scientists in VA.
According to the May agency estimation, about 4,000 workers are on terms with contracts that will expire after a certain period of time. Many of these individuals worked not only in VA research groups but also in clinical teams and local medical centers.
When new leaders first entered the institution, they enacted employment freezing, and the present and former VA researchers told KFF Health News. Because of this, the institute of the agency failed to renew the contract between scientists and support employees. In the last few years, it has often been official stage. The former researcher said to KFF Health News.
The current VA researcher said that the freezing and the uncertainty around them made people simply left the institution.
This loss includes “people with many years of experience and expertise that cannot be replaced.”
Preserving jobs was the focus of parliament. In May, after the inquiries from Senator Jerry Moran, the chairman of the Veterans’ Military Research Committee, the Republican Party on the agency research and the million -million veteran program staff wrote a letter of exemption from the employee’s terms for 90 days and developed an exemption for freezing of the employment of genome projects and other research initiatives.
Taking a job is one thing. It is another thing to do them. In June, some VA researchers could not deliver a presentation for hallucinations and mental health imbalances at the annual research conference of Academy Health, which studies how researchers, policymakers and US health care are delivered.
In this meeting, the MEDICARE & Medicaid Services Center and researchers from medical research and quality institutions were also eliminated from the federal trend. Carroll said, “The decrease in the federal participation is deeply related to the public who depends on our researchers and practitioners’ communities, as well as strict science, transparency, cooperation and evidence -based policies.
KFF Health News It is a national newsroom that produces in -depth journalism about health problems and is one of the core operation programs. KFF.
