Washington

Scientists at a military medical facility in Washington DC have lashed out at plans by the Department of Defense (DOD) to cut back on both its staff and its unique mission.

Observers say that the cuts, at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), would also affect thousands of scientists and clinicians in non-military hospitals, who benefit from the institute's expertise.

“The AFIP is an incredible resource,” says Darlene Ketten, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. “Their pathologists are the only ones I can send tissues to and know I will get an answer affirmed by everyone in the research community.”

The 60-year-old AFIP has an annual budget of $65 million and 785 staff, based on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at several smaller facilities in the Washington area. It investigates US military casualties, as well as deaths that occur on government land. It was scientists at AFIP, for instance, who identified 178 of the 184 people killed during the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

But scientists also use the AFIP's archive of materials and records from almost eight million deaths. For example, Jeff Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the AFIP, used genetic material from lung tissue dating from the First World War to sequence the virulence genes of the deadly Spanish influenza virus (A. H. Reid, T. G. Fanning, J. V. Hultin and J. K. Taubenberger Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 96, 1651–1656; 1999).

The DOD began scrutinizing the AFIP five years ago, when the institute claimed that it needed half-a-billion dollars to replace ageing buildings and equipment. The department found that it was subsidizing the AFIP's non-military work and in 2001 issued a report recommending that the AFIP either impose severe cost-saving measures or transfer some of its work to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In response, AFIP leaders told their staff this spring that they plan to save $6.6 million a year by eliminating more than 100 jobs, and to slash the institute's $3.5-million rent bill by closing three of its five facilities. They also decided to raise consultation and training fees, so that by 2004 the AFIP's military responsibilities would outweigh its civilian workload.

But AFIP staff claim that they were not consulted on the proposed changes, and many are strongly opposed to them. “I understand they had to make cuts but the way they proposed to do it was just malicious,” says Renu Virmani, chair of cardiovascular pathology at the institute. Critics add that the plan will damage the AFIP's ability to retain expert pathologists by restricting its activities in non-military research.

Renata Greenspan, a pathologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research who became director of AFIP in May, is re-evaluating the business plan, and says that she has worked hard to include the institute's staff in the process. She says that she has not determined what combination of staff reduction, rent cuts and increased charges will be necessary, and expects to present a new plan to the AFIP's divisional heads at the end of this month.