Department of Experimental Research

The Department of Experimental Research is a division of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology dedicated to extremely advanced research in civilian sectors. Its name in French, Département de la Recherche Expérimentale, gave its common acronym of REX. It should not be confused with the Bureau of Experimental Military Research, its military equivalent. 
The Department has been plagued with controversies about its methods and its ultra-secretive security. All actions undertaken by the Department can not be directly revealed within a period of 25 years, can be revealed if required by an investigation after this period, and it is only after 150 years that the actions are revealed in a report. This is in effect conceived so that any person having worked on a project is dead by the time it is revealed to the public. The Department is also one of the only Terran institutions with a "perpetual ENAC clearance".
The best known project of REX is Programme 618, also known as Programme Moses, launched in 2134 with the aim of enhancing the entirety of humanity biologically. It was also the largest project in scope, but was extremely effective. It increased human lifespans to around 150 on average by slowing down the aging process slower and made humans on average stronger, more resistant to disease, temperature changes and toxins. At the time, this was attributed to rapid increases in standards of living and medical technology. In reality it was caused by clouds of self-replicating nanomachines emitted into the Earth's atmosphere which were designed to modified the human genome. The genetic advancements done by the Department were instrumental to Project HERAKLES nearly two centuries later. 
The emission of nanomachines was done in 2156, and it was revealed only in 2279. The Department's popularity skyrocketed for a short period, but when it became clear that many other programmes so ethically unhinged had taken place and that most of them resulted in humanitarian disasters, its reputation tanked. It became an object of suspicion and fear in the Terran public.