washington

Although the research shutdown at Duke University Medical Center (see above) only affected clinical researchers, basic scientists have been feeling the pain at the veterans' affairs (VA) hospital system in Los Angeles.

The NIH's Office for Protection from Research Risks shut down human-subjects research in the VA system in late March. But days later, a heavier blow landed: the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington extended the ban to encompass research in the Los Angeles VA system in its entirety (see Nature 398, 448; 1999).

The move was “equivalent to shutting down the US Air Force if you find a scandal in the Air Force Academy”, complains George Sachs, a professor of medicine at UCLA and a senior medical investigator at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center West Los Angeles, where he is director of the laboratory of membrane biology.

Sachs, who studies the biology of duodenal ulcers, has lost the support of two NIH grants and a VA grant. He says he has put more than $5,000 of debt on his credit card, buying everything from DNA primers to computer software in order to keep experiments running.

Because local officials have said that “maintenance” research can proceed, Sachs is allowed to continue with some work that is already under way, but cannot start new projects. However, he says that many of his funding requests, which now must be routed through Washington, have been turned down. And some items are not to be had at all, including animals. So one postdoc, due to return to Germany this month, will leave without finishing his work on rabbit gastric glands.