One of the world’s largest genetic databases includes DNA data that has been donated over the years by more than a million retired military service members. It is part of a project that is run by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The initiative, called the Million Veteran program, is a “crown jewel of the country,” said David Shulkin, a doctor who served as a VA secretary during the first Trump administration. For example, data from the project contributed to research into the genetics of anxiety and peripheral artery diseases and have led to hundreds of published articles. Researchers say that the repository has the potential to answer health questions, not only specifically for veterans-as who is most vulnerable to psychological problems after the service, or why they seem more susceptible to cancer but also relevant to the nation as a whole.
“When the VA does research, it helps veterans, but it helps all Americans,” Shulkin said in an interview.
Researchers now say that they fear that the program is uncertain, which endangers the years of work to collect the genetic data of the veterans and other information, such as surveys and blood samples.
“There is a kind of silence,” said Amy Justice, a Yale epidemiologist with a VA appointment as a staff doctor. “We must ensure that this survives.”
Genetic data is enormously complex and analyzing it requires enormous computing power that VA does not have. Instead, it depends on a partnership with the Energy Department, which offers supercomputers for research purposes.
At the end of April, VA secretary Doug Collins revealed Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top democrat in the Senate Veteran Committee, that agreements that authorized the computers for the Genomics projects, not signed, with some in September, according to materials shared with KFF Health News.
Spokespersons of the two agencies did not respond to several requests for comments. Other current and former employees within the agencies – who asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisals from the Trump government – said they do not know whether the critical similarities will be renewed.
A researcher called Computing “an important ingredient” for important progress in health research, such as the discovery of new medicines.
The agreement with the energy department “must be extended over the next 10 years,” said the researcher.
The uncertainty has caused “incremental” damage, said Justice, pointing to a few million veteran program -subsidies that have expired. As the year progresses, she predicted: “People will feel it a lot.”
Due to their military experience, maintaining the health of veterans is different challenges compared to the care of citizens. The investigations of the Genetic and Clinical Data program enable researchers to investigate questions that veterans have been pilgriming for years. As examples, Shulkin mentioned: “How we might be able to diagnose better and start thinking about effective treatments for these toxic exposures”-such as the burning of pits that are used to remove waste on military outdoor posts abroad-equestrian for post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The rest of the research community will probably not focus specifically” on veterans, he said. However, the VA community has yielded discoveries for the world: Three VA researchers have won Nobel Prizes and the agency created the first pacemaker. His efforts also helped with the ignition of the boom in GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
Nevertheless, turbulence has been felt in the research company of VA. Just like other government scientific agencies, it is buffered by dismissals, contract reductions and canceled research.
“There are planned tests that did not start, there are continuous tests that have stopped, and there are trials that have fallen apart due to fired staff – yes or no?” said Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Persend Collins in a hearing of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
The agency, which has a budget of around $ 1 billion for his research arm this financial year, has reduced the infrastructure that supports scientific research, according to documents shared with KFF Health News by Senate Democrats in the Veterans Committee. It has canceled at least 37 research-related contracts, including for genomic sequencing and for library and biostatist services. The Department has canceled four contracts for cancer registers for veterans separately, creating potential gaps in the statistics of the country.
Work concerns also consume many scientists at the VA.
According to estimates of the agency in May, around 4,000 of his employees are in the long term, with contracts that expire after certain periods. Many of these people not only worked for the research groups of the VA, but also for clinical teams or local medical centers.
When the new leaders first entered the agency, they set up a recruitment rejecting, the current and former VA researchers told KFF Health News. This prevented the Bureau’s research agencies from extending contracts for their scientists and support staff, which in previous years had often been a pro -forma step. Some of those people who had been in the area for decades have not been accepted, a former researcher told KFF Health News.
The freezing and the uncertainty around it led people simply left the desk, said a current VA researcher.
The losses, the individual said, include some people who ‘had years of experience and expertise that cannot be replaced’.
The preservation of jobs – or some jobs – has been a conference focus. In May, after questions from Senator Jerry Moran, the Republican who is chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, about staff for the investigation of the Bureau and the Million Veteran Program, Collins wrote in a letter that he expanded the conditions of research staff and developed exemptions for the hiring of the hiring and other people’s examples.
Keeping jobs is one thing – they do is another. In June, during the annual research meeting of AcademyHealth -an organization of researchers, policymakers and others who study how American health care is delivered -some VA researchers could not give a presentation that touched on psychedelics and differences in mental health and another about discrimination of LGBTQ+ -Senon Carroll.
At that conference, which display a trend in the federal government, researchers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Agency for Research and Quality of Healthcare have also fallen. “This decrease in federal participation is very worrying, not only for our community of researchers and practitioners, but also for the public, who depend on transparency, cooperation and evidence-based policy based on rigorous science,” Carroll said.
We would like to speak with the current and former staff of the Ministry of Health and Human Services of his component agencies who believe that the public should understand the impact of what is happening within federal health bureaucracy. Send KFF Health News over signal on (415) 519-8778 or Contact us here.
KFF Health News is a National Newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health problems and one of the core activities of KFF is-a independent source of research, polling and journalism of health policy. Read more about Kff.
Use our content
This story can be re -published (details) for free.
#million #veterans #gave #DNA #support #health #research #Scientists #worried #data #wasted #KFF #Health #News