Page 19 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

A Widening Idea of Health: The SAMRC from Creation to Covid

Brink could ruefully observe that, ‘although the MRC is accepted as the research body
of the Department of Health, this is not always the case in practice’. He hoped that
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it still ‘would, in practical terms, be treated as the research arm of the Department
of Health’. This was to slow avail, however. A year later he had to admit that the
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situation with regard to doing the Department of Health’s research ‘had not been
fully realised’. The years 1969–85 were thus ones in which the MRC, amidst ongoing
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carping and fault-finding by the Department of Health, sought every opportunity to
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prove its credentials and so assert its primacy among South Africa’s medical research
institutions.
In its search for this recognition the MRC was doubtless assisted by its ready
acceptance of the tenets of apartheid. Blissfully depicting itself as above politics in its
commitment to impartial science – it took as its motto the Latin tag ‘Scire volumus’
(‘We wish to know’) – it made very clear its view of the health needs of the population.

The MRC’s very ornate
first coat of arms,
replete with traditional
symbols of science
(double helix and their
hydrogen bonds), of
Christian salvation and
life (serpents entwining
Tau crosses) and of
South Africa (the sun,
proteas). Beneath it
stands the Latin phrase,
‘Scire volumus’ (We
wish to know).

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