Mass. congressman worried about potential impact of RFK Jr. appointment on federal research funds
Photo/Courtesy of UMass Chan Medical School
The gene therapy research lab at UMass Chan Medical School helps lead discovery of treatments for diseases like ALS.
Congressman Stephen Lynch said Monday morning that President-elect Donald Trump's appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his secretary of health and human services gives him "great concern," and he believes it could negatively impact the greater Boston area's federal funding.
Trump announced last week that Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic whose "Make America Healthy Again" movement is focused on dismantling the lobbying power that the food and pharmaceutical industries have in D.C., would lead the agency that oversees drug approvals, food safety and disease surveillance, in addition to Medicare and Medicaid.
At a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce event Monday morning, Lynch said he was disappointed by the results of the presidential election, but hopeful Congress will find ways toward bipartisan solutions to continue to move the U.S. forward.
"However, if as some of the recent appointments may indicate, there is a retrenchment from the rule of law or departure of, say, peer review, of science in the area of health care -- that would be disastrous," Lynch said.
For the greater Boston area, whose economy is fueled by its world-renowned health care and research facilities, Lynch pointed to the significance of federal funding. With Kennedy at the helm, he seemed skeptical about whether those dollars would continue to flow to Massachusetts.
"Ironically, I remember Ted Kennedy's last active session, we were able to pass an NIH funding bill, the largest funding bill for research for at the National Institutes of Health," Lynch said.
He said the Boston area received between 30 and 40 percent of that bill's $9 billion allocation, because of the quantity of research institutes in the area.
"So having Robert Kennedy Jr. gives me great concern," he said. "We have to be protective of that. And, of course, if we thought that the appointees of the administration were hostile to science and preserving those institutions, of course it would require a relentless resistance to that agenda."
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