Page 50 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

On and over the Brink: The MRC, 1985–1994

A droll contemporary cartoon of Derek Yach on his fervent anti-smoking campaign. It was
presented to him by his MRC colleagues on his departure from the MRC in 1995.

By then, however, the Minister of Health, Dr Rina Venter, was inclining towards
support for putting curbs on smoking and, in drafting the Tobacco Products Control
Bill, she drew extensively on CERSA’s medical and adspend research. Recalling a
pre-parliamentary meeting on the draft bill between representatives of the tobacco
industry and anti-tobacco organizations including CERSA, she said that it had made
her ‘proud of our scientists … Not only did they testify to the thoroughness with
which they do research, but also [they] demonstrated that they could hold their own
in a debate on an international level.’ The bill was passed into law in 1993, though in
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a diluted form despite CERSA’s efforts, making necessary amendments to this Act in
later years.
Although not as centrally, CERSA was also involved in getting the MRC to
respond, however tentatively, to the threat posed by HIV/AIDS in a South Africa as
yet unconvinced of its gravity and increasingly preoccupied with political upheaval.
For example, in 1985 Brink was still of the opinion that ‘We support research into the
AIDS problem as far as we can. AIDS is not the biggest of our research problems – but
it is important because we don’t know how to prevent or control it.’
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