Federal funding cuts jeopardize research on veterans and ALS
For more than 20 years, Marc Weisskopf has been working to understand why military veterans face twice the risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal disease with no known cause or cure, as the rest of the population. That research is now in jeopardy due to federal funding cuts, said Weisskopf, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a May 27 interview with Anderson Cooper.
Veterans’ outsize ALS risk has been known for years, but the underlying reasons have remained a mystery. Weisskopf’s research seeks to find an answer—but will stop with his National Institutes of Health grant terminated. He said he’s trying to find ways to downsize his study in order to continue it in the short term. In the long term, however, “If [my grant termination] doesn’t reverse, the work will just stop,” he said.
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According to Weisskopf, the longer the funding remains cut, the unlikelier it is that the research can easily start up again if and when funding is restored or replaced. “If the money [stays] cut, [my research team] will eventually have to leave and lose their jobs,” he said. “Replacing these people is not easy and replacing the whole system in place to make this work happen doesn’t happen overnight. … It takes time to build this kind of machinery to do these kinds of projects.”
Weisskopf noted that the Veterans Administration and veterans themselves, along with their family members, have long shown interest in the research, but it holds promise for the general public, too. “[Our] work will have implications for people not in the military, in terms of how [ALS] develops and [how] we can try and improve ways to prevent or treat the disorder, which is a devastating one,” Weisskopf said.
Weisskopf also spoke with Cooper about the perils facing all scientific and health research across the country.
“Harvard has the target on its back right now, and we seem to be the focus of attention. But similar things are being done to other schools,” he said, noting that scientists at other universities have experienced slowed or even stopped payments for their research. “[Federal officials] are slowing the scientific process everywhere, in maybe not quite as visible ways. Harvard is at the top of that. But it’s happening across the board.”
Watch the interview on AC360
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