A short general history of the MRC

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
The CSIR's brief was a broad one, but did not include medicine, although, in practice the CSIR was to render many services to medical research through a co-ordinating committee that worked within the organisation. This Committee for Research in Medical Sciences (CRMS, jocularly known as 'Crumbs') was instrumental in the establishment of several research units and sponsored research programmes in medical schools. A certain amount of research was also undertaken in collaboration with institutes abroad.

The role of other organisations, and in particular the CSIR, in the development of medical research was acknowledged in the first Annual Report of the MRC in 1969/70. Prof. A. J. Brink, first President of the MRC, recorded that "Under the aegis of the CSIR much has been achieved to bring scientific medicine in the Republic of South Africa to a remarkably high level".

Meanwhile, in December 1967, there had occurred the world's first human heart transplant, "a remarkable achievement for medical science in South Africa and especially for Professor Chris Barnard, leader of the team who carried out the historic operation." (SESA Vol.V, p. 462b) The operation, the hospital, the medical school, the surgical team and even the patient drew immediate, worldwide attention.

All but drowned in the flood of approbation were murmurs from several quarters that, for the benefit of the greater number of South Africans, research might have been better channelled in other directions. But most people around the world, while perplexed that such an achievement should have occurred in South Africa, continued to shower praise. It came as a surprise on an otherwise uninterruptedly triumphal tour of Britain that an interviewer should put it to a member of the transplant team that the operation had been possible because of South Africa's "reprehensible policy of apartheid". The interviewer's own audience howled him down, but the question was to occur to many people in the future.

Whatever the criticisms, the heart transplant was undoubtedly a major medical achievement and historical landmark and, by its very magnitude, tended to encourage order in the organisation of medical research in the country.

The most notable consequence of this order was, of course, the creation of the MRC which, in its first Annual Report, logged an impressive number of reports from its research units and groups. The topics included amoebiasis, bacterial genetics, bilharzia, cardiac research, cardiovascular pulmonary research, clinical nutrition, dental research, endocrine research, human biochemistry, intermediary metabolism, iodine metabolism, iron and red cell metabolism, nutritional anaemia, oligophrenia, photobiology, pigment metabolism, pneumoconiosis, protein research, renal-metabolic research, reticulo-endothelial cell research, tissue damage and cell metabolism, tuberculosis and viral research.