MIAMI.- The owner of the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Academy of SciencesAlexander Kudryavtsev, was dismissed by the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education following his controversial claims about the longevity of ancient humans and current repercussions due to the sins of ancestors.
As RIA-Novosti reported this week, the reasons for Kudryavtsev’s dismissal were not explained in detail, but the Russian Orthodox Church, a prominent influence in the country, suggested it was Religious discrimination.
During a lecture in 2023, Kudryavtsev stated that before the biblical Flood, life expectancy was up to 900 years and that current genetic diseases are a consequence of “original, ancestral and individual sins” that significantly shortened life.
Likewise, according to the Meduza news portal, Kudryavtsev expressed the belief that children are responsible for the sins of their parents up to the seventh generation.
According to a report by RIA-Novosti, Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Russian church’s family affairs commission, commented that the dismissal of Kudryavtsev “Due to his religious beliefs and statements consistent with these beliefs, he violates the ethics of the scientific community”.
“We have moved beyond Soviet times, when genetics was considered a pseudoscience,” Lukyanov concluded.
During the Soviet era under Stalin, conventional genetics was displaced in favor of the theories of Trofim Lysenko, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be transmitted to offspring.
Source: AP
