The Institute of General Genetics explained the removal of director Kudryavtsev, who linked sins with illnesses

A meeting was held at IOGen on Wednesday at which senior management announced the reasons for his resignation

Alexander Kudryavtsev was removed from his post as director of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Instead, Andrei Misyurin was appointed “from above” as the acting head of the scientific organization. His candidacy was proposed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, having previously agreed with the Russian Academy of Sciences. Employees of the IOGEN RAS told MK how the introduction of the new leader took place.

Alexander Kudryavtsev has headed the institute since the summer of 2022. Let us recall that the director’s chair swayed under Alexander Kudryavtsev last spring, after his speech at the third scientific and theological conference “God – Man – World”. It was not the scientist’s religion itself that caused bewilderment in the scientific community, but his unexpected statements. The scientist, in particular, linked the presence of genetic mutations in humans and life expectancy with the Fall. Referring to the Bible, he suggested that our ancestors lived 900 years because they sinned less.

This approach was called pseudoscientific by a number of scientists, and the biologist was ostracized in a number of media.

Kudryavtsev himself, in an interview with MK, then replied that he did not understand why his speech caused such a wide response, because faith did not in the least interfere with his scientific work. He compared the influence of original sin on life expectancy with the influence of entropic processes (chaos) on the genome. Calling not to sin in order to live longer, Kudryavtsev admitted that he had reached a dead end due to overpopulation of the planet and the Western concept of the “golden billion.” He said that he did not know how to resolve this contradiction, and was just raising this issue for discussion at a theological conference. Kudryavtsev asked not to distort his words.

Rumors that the disgraced director would most likely leave his post circulated throughout the second half of last year. The Ministry of Education and Science set the final point only on January 24. Now Kudryavtsev has been relieved of his position, and Andrei Misyurin has been appointed acting director.

Doctor of Biological Sciences Misyurin was not an employee of the IOGEN RAS. For most of the employees, he is new. It is known that he has his own company for genetic research, he specialized in the field of oncology, in particular, one of his previous places of work was the National Medical Research Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology named after Dima Rogachev.

A meeting was held at the institute on Wednesday. One of the Deputy Ministers, Valery Falkova, and Academician-Secretary of the Department of Biological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Kirpichnikov, came to introduce the new leader. They reported that on January 23, an order was signed to terminate the contract with the former director and announced the conclusion of a new one.

It is interesting that the leaders did not exaggerate the topic of Kudryavtsev’s spring report, explaining to the staff only that a change of director was necessary “to intensify work on the profile of the institute.”

New acting The director began by asking the heads of laboratories to answer the questionnaire, giving them two weeks to complete.

According to IOGen employees, they do not remember that in biological institutes a director was removed in the middle of his tenure. As for Alexander Kudryavtsev himself, after leaving the post of director, he remained to work at the institute as head of the laboratory of plant genetics.