Page 37 - 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

A long-distance library. An Institute for Medical Literature librarian accessing the database
of the National Library of Medicine in Washington via a computer terminal and telephone
link, 1978. This link gave medical researchers at the MRC and associated institutions in
South Africa access to the US-based MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis Retrieval
System) bibliographical retrieval service.

Embryology Research Unit, the MRC–Potchefstroom Design of Catecholaminergic
Drugs Research Unit and the MRC–UCT Human Cell Biology Research Unit, were
the result of successful applications for MRC-backed status by an array of disparate
researchers, each fervently focused on his (they were all male) particular medical
research niche. What they all had in common, however, was their experimental
orientation. Esoteric they may have been, but, as one of these researchers argued,
‘The esoteric activity of sending a man to the moon has made contributions to our
quality of daily life.’
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One group of new experimental research units did, however, share a common
disciplinary base, in genetics, a field which had been burgeoning internationally since
the 1950s, fuelled by the discovery of DNA and the acceptance of the central dogma of
molecular biology. Between 1971 and 1984 four such research units were brought into
being thanks to a research grant by the MRC, in microbial genetics, human ecogenetics,

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