Veterans Affairs research under threat (28 March 2025)

Summary

n the torrent of hasty and ill-informed actions threatening crucial research across the federal government, headlines have focused on the potentially devastating effects of cutting extramural research funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF). Overshadowed by the changes affecting universities and academic medical centres are potentially crippling cuts to the smaller but critically important intramural research programme in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Sudden, arbitrary personnel decisions are placing thousands of researchers and tens of millions of dollars of ongoing research at risk and threatening the future of a $2 billion research enterprise that extends back more than 80 years.