This is true. You can be banned for 'unattended playing' but not much else. It looks like this is just about the opposite of that.

I wonder if they are going to explain races using the "Curse of Canaan"? Chances are they will just gloss over that ugly story.

If that is what the NYT is reporting then they didn't watch (or didn't understand) the presentation. Twice they discussed that the organism was present in nature and transfered to a lab environment rich in arsenic and free from phosophorus. The bacteria thrived where normal organisms wouldn't. They didn't say but I feel pretty confident that they probably did a spectral analysis on their sample before and after and found no phosphorus. (I would have.) The scientists involved on the panel did an excellent job of presenting the material.