A Congress intent on slashing the budget has cut military research money for finding ways to treat damaged eyes, an injury that has affected about 50,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House reduced research funds from $4 million in 2011 to $3.2 million in 2012 for an injury that ranges from uncoordinated vision to blindness.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to include vision-trauma study with 32 other non-combat illnesses to share a $50 million military research fund.
"I think they felt that eye injuries are not as important (as other wounds)," said Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who joined two other members seeking an increase in vision research funding to $15 million. "There was a general interest in cutting anything they could."
Col. Karl Friedl, a director of advanced research for Army medicine, said there are several highly rated proposals that could produce breakthroughs in saving the vision of wounded troops, but there is not enough money to fund them.
Proponents of research, such as the Blind Veterans of America, argue that researching vision loss from combat isn't being done anywhere outside the military. Other efforts focus on vision loss from aging or disease.
In the Senate, Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and a decorated World War II veteran who lost his right arm in combat, said there were many research areas in need of funding.
Vision loss would contend with illnesses such as arthritis, autism and Alzheimer's for military research monies, a Senate Appropriations report says.
"The Senate plan just isn't a guarantee that battlefield eye trauma will get funded," a statement from the National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research said.
In the House, C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., chairman of the defense panel for the Appropriations Committee, said he was asked to find $9 billion in savings.
"That was not easy," he said. "This year all of our numbers have to be cut."
The Pentagon said several knowledge gaps exist about treating eye wounds, including deficits in treatment and rehabilitation and understanding vision loss linked to brain injury.
Retired master sergeant Jeffrey Mittman, 41, who lost his left eye and considerable vision in his right eye from a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq in 2005, said he is mystified about Congress' decision.
"When you're talking about men and women you ask to go fight, and then you cut the research on the care when they return," Mittman said, "I don't think it makes much sense."
Panelists and lobbyists, 1A
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