Magpies and Blackbirds

One of the more interesting (and gross) reference questions I answered when I was the librarian in the Veterinary Medicine Library, was about whether the diseases of blackbirds would be made harmless if they were baked in a pie.* I kid you not. The phone call was from a chef in New York who had entered a contest, and he wanted to bake 12 and 20 blackbirds. (Can't imagine trying to pluck the feathers, but maybe his assistants did that.) When I asked where he was going to get them, he told me he planned to shoot them. So when I saw the Magpie Trial report, I thought just maybe it was about birds. It wasn't. The Magpie Trial was a large international trial to evaluate the effects of magnesium sulphate compared to placebo when given to women with pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for women and children and accounts for 10% of maternal deaths, and is also associated with increased perinatal mortality. This is important research for poor countries. So I suppose the name of the trial comes from MAG and Pre eclampsia. Clever names these trial folks use. My theory is there is a committee somewhere who comes up with these names.

Anyway. In this trial and the follow-up it was proven that magnesium sulphate for women with pre-eclampsia halves the risk of progression to eclampsia with positive results for longer-term outcome for both the mother and child. However, it is quite expensive, depending on the country where the mother is treated. During a conference, some interesting tales came out on the follow-up of these patients when collaborators from 19 countries met. I thought this one was good--it took place in Karachi, Pakistan:

My assistant tried to contact one family. We wrote several letters but did not get any reply. One fine day a lady telephoned my office asking which baby and mother I wanted to examine. According to her, in her house there were only grown up people. Nobody had had a baby recently. The youngest child was fourteen years old. She said her mother was really upset. We went into the details, and traced the husband. He was at work and we found out that this husband had two wives. The second wife had delivered in our hospital and was recruited into the Magpie Trial. The first wife had no idea of this second marriage. The husband had given the address where he lived with his first wife. The husband asked us not to mention this to the first wife, otherwise there would be a big upheaval. So this lady was followed up by phone only, and through her husband. Interesting revelations took place during the follow up study of the Magpie Trial! By the way a man is allowed to have two wives at the same time by Muslim tradition, but according to Muslim law he has to have permission from the first wife to marry the second time.

*As I recall, I had to check with our poultry disease expert who concluded any bacteria would have been killed by the heat. Not sure about the gun-shot residue.