Page 33 - 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

research entities which focused on these conditions. For one, the Liver Research
Group at UCT, this was the endorsement of research done there piecemeal since
1962 and the start of more organized (and better-funded) research, which saw it gain
an international reputation and ascend the MRC’s hierarchical research ladder, to
multidisciplinary research centre (which was higher on the scale than a research unit
and more enduring) in 1987 and to acclaim by the MRC in 2000 as ‘one of the oldest
jewels in the MRC’s crown’.
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If, however, researchers in the MRC’s own internal research institutes or units
stepped out of the MRC-defined line, it did not hesitate to crack the whip. In 1978
it vetoed the presentation of a paper to a New York Academy of Sciences conference
by two researchers at its National Research Institute for Occupational Diseases.
They had investigated a possible link between the inhalation of asbestos fibres in
and around asbestos mines in the Northern Cape and the incidence of cancer among
miners and communities there. ‘It was felt that the paper was open to criticism on
scientific grounds to such an extent that it would be unwise to … present the data at an
international congress … without further clarifying the various scientific aspects’, one
of the authors was told disingenuously by Brink’s deputy. On top of this, he added,

Hogging the operating tables. Two pigs which had had liver transplants being examined by the
MRC-UCT Liver Research Unit in 1975 for signs of bleeding gastric ulcers which occurred
in about 20% of pigs undergoing such surgery. The surgeon on the left is Dr Rosemary
Hickman, assisted by Mr Hamilton Naki (looking down) and an unnamed assistant. On the
right are two laboratory assistants, Mr Albert Lesch and Ms Nicky (surname unknown).

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