Restore the VA Cancer Registry Before More Veterans Run Out of Time

Final signature count: 41

41 signatures toward our 30,000 goal

The Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry tracks cancer cases across VA medical centers nationwide — identifying which veterans have cancer, what type, at what stage, and how they're responding to treatment. It connects eligible patients to clinical trials. For veterans with rare or aggressive cancers, those trials can be the difference between life and death. That registry is now severely compromised.

What DOGE Cut — and Who Gets Hurt

As part of a sweeping reduction in federal contracts, DOGE-directed cuts terminated the contracts that support the VA's cancer registry database and data collection services. The VA canceled more than 600 contracts in total.⁴ The cancer registry wasn't a line item that could disappear quietly. It is operational infrastructure — and when it broke down, VA medical centers lost the ability to systematically identify veterans who qualify for clinical trials.

Veterans are already at elevated risk for occupational cancers tied to asbestos exposure, burn pit smoke, and other service-related hazards.³ These are not coincidental illnesses. They are the direct result of conditions the government placed these men and women in. Many waited years for formal recognition of their exposures. Now, at the moment their cancers demand the most coordinated care possible, the system built to provide it has been dismantled.

Alarms From Inside the VA

Internal VA communications reveal that staff at multiple facilities raised urgent concerns about the cuts' impact on oncology research and patient enrollment in clinical trials.¹ These warnings came from the people closest to the patients — and they were ignored.

Clinical trial windows are not indefinite. Treatment delays accumulate. Every week the registry operates at reduced capacity is a week in which eligible veterans may miss enrollment opportunities they cannot recover.

Congress Is Demanding Answers

The contract terminations have drawn forceful pushback from lawmakers. Senator Ron Wyden sent a formal letter to the VA Secretary demanding a full accounting of which contracts were canceled, which facilities were affected, and what the department intended to do to restore continuity of care.² Senator Richard Blumenthal, speaking at a Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee forum, called the cancellations chaotic and dangerous, and argued that the VA had no coherent plan to protect veteran patients from the damage.⁵

Part of a Larger Pattern

The registry crisis is not an isolated failure. The broader wave of VA cuts in 2025 and 2026 has disrupted services across multiple care categories, leaving veterans with delays in specialty care and gaps in established treatment plans.⁶ The cancer registry situation is one of the most serious examples — because the patients affected have the least time to wait.

The VA Can Fix This

The VA has the authority to reinstate these contracts, restore full data collection and reporting operations at every affected medical center, and guarantee that eligible veterans can continue enrolling in oncology clinical trials. What is required is the decision to act.

Veterans with cancer earned every benefit the VA provides. Sign the petition now to demand that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs reinstate the canceled cancer registry contracts and restore full operations — before more veterans lose access to trials they cannot afford to miss.