Linda Resnik, PhD, a VA research-health scientist at the Providence VA Medical Center was collaborating on a study with researchers at DoD’s Center for Intrepid (CFI) when the site principal investigator there was reassigned to a different location. A second DoD site principal investigator who took over was subsequently also reassigned to a different location.

WASHINGTON — Military medicine may have dodged a bullet this summer when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reconsider a case involving the Feres Doctrine, which, in effect, bars active-duty personnel from filing medical malpractice lawsuits against DoD health care providers. Opponents of the law, however, vow to continue the fight in Congress, the only remaining battleground. Please read this article and participate in this month's online opinion poll about whether the Feres Doctrine should be overturned and active-duty military servicemembers be allowed to sue DoD health care providers for medical malpractice.

Arlington, VA — The Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) in Thailand ran the world’s largest HIV vaccine trial from 2003-2009. The Naval Medical Research Unit 3 in Egypt detected the first human case of Avian influenza in Egypt in 2006.

With an influx of women veterans entering the VA system in higher numbers than ever before, the department has given women’s health care high priority. One step in addressing this growing population is assessing what women are looking for in a VA health-care experience.

WASHINGTON — Nearly three out of five Native American women have been assaulted by their spouses or intimate partners in what now “has reached epidemic rates,” a federal official told a Senate committee last month.