U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch got straight to the point this week about the potential home turf impact of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helming the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services.

“Having Robert Kennedy there gives me great concern, given some of his positions and earlier statements,” Lynch, D-8th District, told a gathering of business leaders in Boston on Monday.

Kennedy, who mounted an independent White House bid before dropping out in August and throwing his support to President-elect Donald Trump, is well-known as a vaccine skeptic.

And he holds other views that have alarmed health care experts.

Trump tapped Kennedy last week to lead the federal agency, which has oversight of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food & Drug Administration, among other influential offices.

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Lynch, who addressed the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, said he fears that federal funding for the Bay State could dry up, dealing a body blow to the health care and research facilities that power the region’s economy.

“If there is a retrenchment of the rule of law, or [the] abandonment of peer review or hard science in the area of health care. It would be extremely harmful to our area, the Greater Boston area,” Lynch told the crowd at the Intercontinental Hotel on the edge of the city’s Seaport district.

Lynch isn’t the only one.

“I have concerns about it, obviously, based on the positions he’s taken,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said last week after an appearance at the John F. Kennedy Library, NBC-10 in Boston reported.

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U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-3rd District, who won reelection to her House leadership post on Tuesday, said she had “great concerns for someone who has shown complete disregard for public health.”

Taking to X, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, shared a graphic showing the near-total efficacy rates of various vaccines, then dryly reposted Kennedy’s observation that “There’s no vaccine that is safe & effective.”

Kennedy’s nomination isn’t a done deal. He’ll still have to win confirmation in the U.S. Senate, where Republicans are set to take control early next year.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare subcommittee, said she’ll have “a lot of questions” for Kennedy.

“RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions,” Warren posted to X last week. “He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio.”

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who’d also be called on the cast a confirmation ballot, similarly isn’t a fan.

“Dangerous. Unqualified. Unserious,” Markey posted to X.

Speaking to Fox News last week, incoming U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Kennedy and other Trump administration cabinet appointees “deserve a process.”

“They are nominees that the president has made, put forward, and you know, the Senate has the the role of advice and consent under the Constitution, so they deserve a hearing and we’ll proceed accordingly,” Thune told Fox host Brett Baier.

Thune left open the prospect of allowing so-called “recess appointments,” which would bypass Senate confirmation.

While he hoped to “do this the regular way,” Thune told Baier that Republicans are " not taking any options off the table."

In his appearance before business leaders on Monday, Lynch reflected on another Kennedy’s support for health care research, the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

“Ironically, I remember Ted Kennedy’s last active session, we were able to pass an NIH funding bill, the largest funding bill for research at the National Institutes of Health,” Lynch said, according to State House News Service.

Lynch said the Boston area received between 30% and 40% of that bill’s $9 billion allocation, because of the quantity of research institutes in the area, the wire service reported.

“Of course, if we thought the appointees of the administration were hostile to the rule of law and hard science, and preserving those institutions, that would require relentless resistance to that agenda, to preserve the integrity of those institutions whenever possible,” Lynch said.