Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

  • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    9 months ago

    This story could also title “East European State under Western duress had to fire Christian top scientist with life-prolonging ideas” /s

    • ares35@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      a ‘christian’ ‘scientist’ that actually read the first bits of the bible a few wikipedia pages on early biblical persons; and decided it was factual historical accounts.