A leading Russian geneticist has been fired after claiming humans once lived for 900 years but the lifespan is shortened now due to the sins of our ancestors.
Dr Alexander Kudryavtsev was sacked as head of the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics. And despite the Russian Education Ministry not giving a reason for his dismissal, but his outlandish views – linked to his religious beliefs – are widely seen as the trigger.
At a conference in March the academic argued that the Universe, made by God in the process of creation, fell into “decay” due to the sins of people. In the deep past, people lived to be 900, he said, citing only “evidence” of a graph on the Internet. He claimed sin was the cause of mutations in genetic diseases harming modern man, he told his shocked audience in Minsk.
The 60 year old had also claimed children “up to the seventh generation are responsible for the sins of their fathers” and when challenged by the media, he said: “I wanted to emphasise the harmful influence of so-called bad habits – what theologians call sin. They also affect the genome. If a mutation occurs in your body, in your gametes, it will be passed on to your offspring, and nothing can be done about it. The conclusion is simple: if you want to have healthy offspring, don’t develop bad habits, don’t fall into sin.”
He claimed people used to live for 900 years
He was forced to add: “I would like to state that I voiced my personal point of view. It is in no way the position of the Russian Academy of Sciences, nor the position of the Church. All this does not affect the work of the Institute of Genetics in any way.”
In June last year he was removed from his post as chairman of the academy’s Council on Genetics and Selection and he head of the Russian church’s commission on family issues, Fyodor Lukyanov, criticised Kudryavtsev’s dismissal. He had been sacked “for religious beliefs and statements in accordance with these beliefs” and this “violates the ethics of the scientific community”. Mr Lukyanov said: “We have already gone through Soviet times, when genetics was long considered a pseudoscience.”
Credit: Mirror