A legislative proposal to cut in half a Pentagon-funded medical research account, subtracting hundreds of millions of dollars in this fiscal year alone, would jeopardize the fight against deadly diseases, experts said this week.
The six-month continuing resolution for fiscal 2025, which the House has passed and the Senate is expected to take up soon, would cut the Defense Health Program’s research and development account by $1.2 billion — from $2.9 billion in fiscal 2024 to $1.7 billion, or 41 percent. The biggest subset of that cut is an $859 million, or 57 percent, reduction to the so-called Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program: from $1.5 billion to $650 million.
That program, created and sustained by Congress, competitively awards funds to hundreds of projects each year at both Defense Department labs and outside research institutions, including at many American universities, to study everything from cancer to battlefield wounds to suicide prevention.
