A million veterans gave DNA to aid health research. Scientists worry the data will be wasted.
One of the largest genetic databases in the world includes DNA data given over the years by more than a million retired military service. This is part of a project managed by the Department of Veterans Combators.
The initiative, nicknamed the Million Veteran Program, is a “jewel of the country’s crown,” said David Shulkin, a doctor who was a secretary at the first Trump administration. Project data has contributed to research on anxiety genetics and the disease of peripheral arteries, for example, and led to hundreds of articles published. Researchers say that the repository has the potential to help respond to health issues not only specific to veterans – as is most vulnerable to mental health problems after service, or why they seem more subject to cancer – but also relevant to the nation as a whole.
“When it is going to research, it helps veterans, but it helps all Americans,” said Shulkin in an interview.
Researchers now say that they fear that the program will be in limbo, compromising the years of work it took to collect the genetic data of veterans and other information, such as surveys and blood samples.
“There is a sort of this cone of silence,” said Amy justice, an epidemiologist from Yale with a appointment as a personnel doctor. “We must make sure that this survives.”
The genetic data is extremely complex and the analysis requires a large power of calculation that goes does not have. Instead, he relied on a partnership with the Department of Energy, which provides his superordinators for research purposes.
At the end of April, the secretary of VA Doug Collins revealed to Senator Richard Blumenthal, the best democrat of the senatorial committee of veterans, that the agreements authorizing the use of computers for the genomic project remained unclear, some expired in September, according to the documents shared with Kff Health News by the Democrats of the Congressal.
The spokesperson for the two agencies did not respond to several requests for comments. Other current and former employees in agencies – who asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisals from the Trump administration – said they did not know if the critical agreements will be renewed.
A researcher called IT “a key ingredient” to the major progress in health research, such as the discovery of new drugs.
The agreement with the energy department “should be extended for the next 10 years,” said the researcher.
The uncertainty has caused “increasing” damage, said the judge, pointing to a few million program subsidies of veterans who have detached. Over the year, she predicted, “people will feel it a lot.”
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Due to their military experience, the maintenance of the health of veterans poses different challenges in relation to civilian care. Examination of the genetic and clinical data program allow researchers to study the questions that have enabled veterans for years. By way of examples, Shulkin cited “how we could be able to better diagnose earlier and start thinking about effective treatments for these toxic exhibitions” – as if to burn pits used to eliminate waste in military outposts abroad – as well as predispositions to post -traumatic stress disorder.
“The rest of the research community cannot focus specifically” on veterans, he said. The community will, however, have given importance of importance to the world: Three researchers go won Nobel Prize winners and the agency created the first cardiac stimulator. His efforts have also helped to trigger the boom of GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
However, turbulence was felt throughout the VA research company. Like other government scientific agencies, it has been shaken by layoffs, reductions in contracts and canceled research.
“There are planned tests that have not started, there are tests in progress that have been stopped, and there are trials that have collapsed due to staff layoffs – yes or no?” said senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.), pressing Collins during a hearing in May of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
The agency, which has a budget of around 1 billion dollars for its research arm, has reduced the infrastructure that supports the scientific investigation, according to documents shared with KFF Health News by the Senate Democrats within the Veterans Committee. He canceled at least 37 research contracts, in particular for genomic sequencing and for library and biostatistic services. The ministry has canceled four contracts separately for cancer registers for veterans, creating potential gaps in the country’s statistics.
Work concerns also consume many scientists in the VA.
According to the agency estimates in May, around 4,000 of its workers are on duration limits, with contracts that expire after certain periods. Many of these people have worked not only for VA research groups but also with clinical teams or local medical centers.
When the new leaders entered the agency for the first time, they instituted a job freeze, the current and former researchers told Kff Health News. This prevented the agency’s research offices from renewing contracts for their scientists and support staff, who in previous years had often been a pro form. Some of these people who have existed for decades have not been rehired, said a former researcher at Kff Health News.
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The frost and uncertainty around it led people to leave the agency, said a researcher in the current VA.
The losses, the individual said, include some people who “had years of experience and expertise who cannot be replaced”.
The preservation of jobs – or jobs – was an objective of the congress. In May, after the surveys of Senator Jerry Moran, the Republican who chairs the Veterans Affairs Committee, on agency research staff and the millions of millions of veterans, Collins wrote in a letter that he extended the terms of research employees for 90 days and develop exemptions at La Freze for hiring for the Genomics project and other research initiatives.
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Holding a job is one thing – doing them is another. In June, during the annual research meeting of the Academy – an organization of researchers, decision -makers and others who study the way in which American health care is provided – some researchers have not been able to make a presentation affecting psychedelic and mental health disparities and another on discrimination against discrimination LGBTQ +, Aaron Carroll, Kff Health News.
During this conference, reflecting a trend through the federal government, researchers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Agency for Research and the Quality of Health Cares also abandoned the presentation. “This drop in federal participation is deeply worrying, not only for our community of researchers and practitioners, but also for the public, who count on transparency, collaboration and policy based on evidence based on rigorous science,” said Carroll.
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