A short general history of the MRC

A move from Pretoria to Parow
The Council's own head office was officially inaugurated in September 1971 at Tiervlei, within the Municipality of Parow, on a site donated jointly by the Parow City Council and the Cape Provincial Administration. A number of staff members of the MRC had only recently moved across from the CSIR and were reluctant to move from Pretoria.

Acceptance of the Cape property followed brisk debate on the advisability of moving from Pretoria. The site chosen was close to the Karl Bremer Hospital and adjoined the new Tygerberg Hospital, both institutions used for training by the medical faculty of the University of Stellenbosch. The President of the MRC, Dr A. J. Brink, was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Stellenbosch from 1971 to 1983 and was influential in scientific and government circles in Pretoria at the time. Despite vigorous opposition, he was able to obtain a decision to move to the Tiervlei site.

Dr Brink became full-time President of the MRC only in 1984, on resigning his post as Dean. He retired from the MRC at the end of 1988 and was succeeded by Dr Philip van Heerden. Dr Walter Prozesky was appointed as the MRC's Deputy President. The change of leadership after some 20 years provided a suitable occasion on which to review, critically and dispassionately, both the route that had been travelled and the way that lay ahead.

Changed and changing circumstances, including increased economic pressure, urgently demanded new policies and new directions.

There were, at Dr Brink's retirement, no fewer than seven institutes wholly or almost entirely staffed by the MRC and occupying MRC premises across the country. The institutes were:
Research Institute for Nutritional Diseases (RIND), Research Institute for Environmental Diseases (RIED), Research Institute for Diseases in a Tropical Environment (RIDTE), Research Institute for Medical Biophysics (RIMB), Tuberculosis Research Institute (TRI), Institute for Biostatics (IB), and Institute for Biomedical Communication (IBC). This proliferation of institutes was at variance with the early principle of directing the greater portion of research through existing institutions rather than undertaking it within the MRC structures. Another departure was the creation of a subsidiary commercial division, Medical Technologies Ltd. (Medtech), to oversee the generation of additional income.

But even good intentions can get out of hand. Medtech represented steps taken to 'privatise' the MRC's research output, "especially with regard to the development and implementation of research products". The MRC held 100 per cent of the shares in Medtech itself, while as far as most of the subsidiary companies were concerned, it had a holding of around 49 per cent. It was"envisaged that at least 75 per cent of the share capital will be taken up by the private sector". This represented a new and distant departure from the exercise of expertise in medical research.