Page 156 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Notes

17 The Stemlit Building was the first dedicated research building on the ‘Medicina’ campus. Until
then, the only MRC building there was the MRC head office located in a converted block of flats which,
comprehensively revamped, is today known as Building B. In 1982 a specially built administrative block
took over its function. Nearby, on the Tygerberg Hospital campus, the National Research Institute for
Nutritional Diseases building had been opened in 1974.
18 MRC digital booklet, ‘SAMRC@50’ (MRC, 2019), p. 126.
19 MRC digital booklet, ‘SAMRC@50’ (MRC, 2019), p. 49.
20 Cited in MRC digital booklet, ‘SAMRC@50’ (MRC, 2019), p. 138.
21 M. Makgoba, Leadership for Transformation since the Dawn of South Africa’s Democracy: An Insider’s View
(Skotaville, Johannesburg, 2023), p. 224.
22 Interview with anonymous MRC staffer, 14 June 2022.
23 Professor Yackoob Kassim Seedat.
24 Professor Soromini Kallichurum, head of the Department of Pathology.
25 Professor Ramaranka Anderson Mogotlane.
26 MRC, AR 1984, p. iv.
27 Brink, Brood op mediese waters, p. 164.
28 Cited in ‘SAMRC@50’, p. 128.
29 Anomalous in apartheid South Africa because, although all of its students were black, it was part of
the whites-only Natal University. See V. Noble, A School of Struggle: Durban’s Medical School and the
Education of Black Doctors (UKZN Press, Scottsville, 2013).
30 Cited in D. Yach and G. Martin (eds.), Building a Healthy Nation through Research: Review of the MRC’s
Essential Health Research Group; Seminar/Review … June 1993 (MRC, Parow, 1993), p. 112.
31 MRC, AR 1977, p. 9.
32 Die Burger, 1 October 1983, p. 4.
33 Sunday Times, 19 October 1980, p. 103.
34 Yach and Martin, Building a Healthy Nation, p. 112.
35 MRC, AR 1979, p. 16.
36 MRC, AR 1969–70, p. 21.
37 MRC, AR 1984, p. 40.
38 W. Stassen, ‘Old Transkei is International Cancer Hotspot’, Health-E News, 26 February 2014, https://
health-e.org.za/2014/02/26/old-transkei-international-cancer-hot-spot/.
39 See www.anatomybioanth.uct.ac.za/mseleni-joint-disease.
40 MRC News, 30, 6 (December 2000), p. 16.
41 Copy in author’s possession of letter from J. de V. Lochner, Vice-President MRC, to Dr L. M. Irwig, 6
September 1978. Presumably the ‘particular circumstances and unfavourable climate’ was a reference to
the international criticism of South Africa in the wake of the 1976 Soweto uprising.
42 L. Flynn, ‘South Africa Blacks Out Blue Asbestos Risk’, New Scientist, 30 June 1983, p. 84. For another
example of the MRC’s refusal to be seen to be associated with criticism of a powerful economic stakeholder
in South Africa at this time, see chapter 3, note 39.
43 Letter by A. J. Brink in New Scientist, 26 May 1983, p. 575.
44 J. L. Botha, L. M. Irwig and P. M. Strebel, ‘Excess Mortality from Stomach Cancer, Lung Cancer and
Asbestosis and/or Mesothelioma in Cocodolite Mining Districts in South Africa’, American Journal of
Epidemiology, 123, 1 (January 1986), pp. 30–40.
45 Dr Rodney Ehrlich cited in L. Baldwin-Ragaven, L. London and J. de Gruchy, An Ambulance of the
Wrong Colour: Health Professionals, Human Rights and Ethics in South Africa (Juta, Cape Town, 1999), pp.
138–9.
46 MRC, AR 1976, p. 8.
47 MRC, AR 1978, p. 7.

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