The American College of Radiology's 2026 Annual Meeting opened Saturday in Washington and runs through Wednesday. [1] The Advanced Medical Technology Association is already on record asking the White House to delay privatization of helium-supply infrastructure as a patient-safety question; whether the ACR floor or AMTA's letter produces a Project Vault helium amendment this week is the test the paper named in Saturday's piece. [2]

The reserve sold by the Bureau of Land Management to Messer in 2024 was dropped from the 2025 critical-minerals list and skipped by Project Vault even as the Iran-war energy crisis recreated the cryogenic-supply pressure the reserve was built to absorb. [3] An MRI scanner without liquid helium is a very expensive paperweight.

ACR's program has session tracks on workforce, AI integration, and reimbursement. [1] None of those are the floor question. The floor question is whether a professional society of three thousand radiologists, meeting blocks from the Capitol while a war pushes liquid helium prices, can convert its standing committee letter into a single committee mark in an appropriations cycle that is trying to spend less, not more.

The week is the institutional reactor. The AMTA letter goes from filed to amended, or it does not. Washington — already short of independent boards by twenty-two — is the place to find out.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Washington