With Army's Walter Reed Center Closing, Future of Pathology Tissue Archive in Question

The independent Base Closure and Realignment Commission today voted to shutter the US Army's Walter Reed Medical Center.

The 9-member commission exists to review the Department of Defense base closing recommendations and is subject to approval by President Bush, and the Congress.

Under the Pentagon's plan, the hospital would move most of its staff and services to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to create a new facility. According to the commission, this would cost a total of $990 million for a savings of $301 million over 20 years.

Walter Reed is the Army's largest healthcare facility, and one of the largest in the Department of Defense. It has a high profile because it has been the place where presidents and foreign dignitaries have gone for state-of-the-art care and treatment.

Walter Reed also houses the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which has 22 subspecialty departments with more than 820 personnel, including more than 120 pathologists and other scientists.

The AFIP has a tissue repository from more than 3 million cases, including some 50 million paraffin blocks, and 10 million containers of formalin-fixed tissue. According to an opinion by pathologist Philip Cagle, writing in the journal Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, the BRAC proposal would allow the tissue repository to be stored, but does not spell out how this repository would be maintained, updated, and made functional for education and research.

”The tissue repository is probably of no use without subspecialty pathology expertise to make it meaningful,” said Cagle. He asks for personnel to support the repository. “A group of subspecialists is needed if the full potential of this repository is to be met for in-house, organized symposia, telemedicine, and online teaching.”

After the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11, the institute identified 184 of the 189 people who died in the terrorist attack, some from only pieces of tissue.

The institute was established during the Civil War to study diseases on the battlefield.

The AFIP earlier this year issued a draft business plan that it projected would save $17.5 million a year. In June, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that said AFIP's plan would only save $5 million a year and would face a budget shortfall, given the DoD's plan to reduce funding by the estimated savings in the draft business plan.