Page 30 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Aanmatiging (Self-Assertion): The MRC, 1969–1985

At the heart of the CORIS project. One of the 7350 people enrolled in the project has an
ECG done, 1979.

investigate the aetiology of so-called Oudtshoorn skin disease, which occurred especially
among Afrikaners, but, concerned about the effect of sunlight on skin, especially if it
was white, it undertook research on, inter alia, how best to protect it against sunburn.
In the 1980s, with thousands of young white men conscripted into lengthy military
service, this research unit began to receive funding for this from the South African
Defence Force too. Though the concern prompting this financial support was only
37
skin-deep, it was nevertheless warmly welcomed by the research unit.
Diseases and conditions found among less pale-skinned South Africans were
rarely the object of such targeted medical research or intervention by MRC units and
groups in high-apartheid South Africa – with apparently one significant exception.
If a disease was thought to be nutritionally related and thus remediable by direct,
cheap dietary intervention, then the MRC showed itself willing to encourage such
research. This seems to have been the case particularly if the condition was prevalent
in a Bantustan homeland which a South African parastatal could thus publicly be seen
to assist, thereby perhaps earning kudos for both the South African and the homeland
governments.
Accordingly, in the 1980s the widespread incidence of liver and oesophageal
cancer among African men in the Transkei – the incidence of oesophageal cancer

23