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The Trump administration says it will cut more than 70,000 jobs - 70,000 - also hundreds of contracts from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And this comes after Congress authorized close to a billion dollars in research funding for the agency. The pacemaker, how we do liver transplants, CT scans, all of these innovations came from the VA. And as NPR's Quil Lawrence reports, scientists fear that lifesaving research will be scrapped.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Stephan Fihn started working at the VA in 1982.
STEPHAN FIHN: I was a primary care physician at the VA for 36 years, up until the time I retired.
LAWRENCE: He saw patients but also held various leadership posts, including acting chief of research and development. And in four decades, he got to see that research work.
FIHN: Yeah. I mean, a big one was the management of prostate enlargement. You know, when I went into practice, the standard treatment for men with prostate symptoms was surgery.
LAWRENCE: But then VA research revealed that medication - alpha blockers - was just as effective as surgery.
FIHN: And so instead of sending a patient to a urologist for a surgeon, I could prescribe a pill.
LAWRENCE: Dr. Fihn can go on. He watched veterans and civilians alike start to get nicotine patches to quit smoking, new PTSD treatments, both through medications and other therapy. And just as importantly, VA research uncovered things that don't work. Former chief of VA R&D Timothy O'Leary says the private sector has no interest in funding studies that might show that their new drug is not better than the old one.
TIMOTHY O'LEARY: Sometimes, and VA clinical trials have shown this many times, that new intervention really isn't any better. Well, pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, may not want to take the risk of that kind of outcome. But VA can take the risk because it's not in the business of selling drugs. It's in the business of doing the best possible job for veterans and the best possible job for taxpayers.
LAWRENCE: VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz said VA is not planning to scale back its research mission, but is conducting a comprehensive review. And after initially calling a hiring freeze, VA paused that for research jobs, at least until June. Researchers say they worry that the public doesn't know how much U.S. medical innovation involves VA projects. Rashi Romanoff is with the National Association for Veterans' Research. She's hoping the word will get out before the pause ends in about a month.
RASHI ROMANOFF: Investing in VA's biomedical and innovation arm is good also for America on the global stage. I think the pause has given us all a chance to be able to talk about that, that we should be doubling down in research investments.
LAWRENCE: But several researchers, who NPR granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, said the uncertainty means they're already losing critical support staff, like data analysts to the VA's deferred resignation offers. And they're concerned that research projects that examine women's health or race-related health issues are likely to be cut and that long-term projects could get interrupted, like the VA's Million Veteran Program, one of the world's largest genetic study groups. But the VA has promised massive job cuts, then pledged that none of those cuts will come from the VA's hundreds of thousands of frontline health jobs. VA has made no such pledge for medical research jobs.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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