Margie Profet
{{short description|American academic}}
{{Infobox scientist
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| name = Margie Profet
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| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1958|08|7}}
| birth_place = Berkeley, California, U.S.
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| fields = Evolutionary biology
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| alma_mater = Harvard University
University of California, Berkeley
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Margaret J. "Margie" Profet (born August 7, 1958) is an American evolutionary biologist with no formal biology training who created a decade-long controversy when she published her findings on the role of Darwinian evolution in menstruation,{{cite journal |last=Profet |first=Margie |author-link=Margie Profet |date=September 1993 |title=Menstruation as a Defense Against Pathogens Transported by Sperm |periodical=The Quarterly Review of Biology |place=Chicago, Illinois |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |volume=68 |issue=3 |pages=335–386 |jstor=2831191 |issn=0033-5770 |pmid=8210311|doi=10.1086/418170|s2cid=23738569 }} allergies{{cite journal |last=Profet |first=Margie |author-link=Margie Profet |date=March 1991 |title=The Function of Allergy: Immunological Defense Against Toxins |periodical=The Quarterly Review of Biology |place=Chicago, Illinois |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |volume=66 |issue=1 |pages=23–62 |jstor=2830331 |issn=0033-5770 |pmid=2052671 |doi=10.1086/417049|s2cid=5648170 }} and morning sickness.{{cite journal |last=Profet |first=Margie |author-link=Margie Profet |year=1988 |title=The Evolution of Pregnancy Sickness as Protection to the Embryo Against Pleistocene Teratogens |periodical=Evolutionary Theory |volume=8 |pages=177–190 }}{{cite book |last=Profet |first=Margie |editor1-last=Barkow |editor1-first=Jerome H. |editor1-link=Jerome H. Barkow |editor2-last=Cosmides |editor2-first=Leda |editor2-link=Leda Cosmides |editor3-last=Tooby |editor3-first=John |editor3-link=John Tooby |title=The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1992 |pages=327–366 |chapter=Chapter 8: Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens |isbn=978-0-19-506023-2|title-link=The Adapted Mind }} She argued that these three processes had evolved to eliminate pathogens, carcinogens and other toxins from the body.
Career
A graduate of Harvard University, where she studied political philosophy with Harvey Mansfield and graduated in 1980, and University of California, Berkeley, where in 1985 she received a bachelor's degree in physics, Profet returned to school in 1994, studying mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she was awarded a "visiting scholar" position in the astronomy department, an allied discipline.{{cite web | last=Mcdermott | first=Terry | title=Darwinian Medicine—It's a War Out There and Margie Profet, a Leading Theorist in a New Science, Thinks the Human Body Does Some Pretty Weird Things to Survive | website=Seattle Times Newspaper | date=31 July 1994 | url=https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19940731&slug=1922927}} Several years later, she returned to Harvard, once again to study math.
When Profet won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993,{{cite web|title=Fellows List – P|url=http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1142789/k.9619/Fellows_List__P.htm|publisher=MacArthur Foundation|access-date=2 April 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110412005752/http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1142789/k.9619/Fellows_List__P.htm|archive-date=12 April 2011}} international media took notice. New York Times reporter Natalie Angier called Profet's theory that menstruation protected some female mammal's reproductive canals a "radical new view".{{cite news |last=Angier |first=Natalie |title=Radical New View of Role of Menstruation | work=The New York Times | date=21 September 1993 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/21/science/radical-new-view-of-role-of-menstruation.html}} Scientific American, Time, Omni, and even People Magazine all followed with in-depth profiles of the 35-year-old "maverick" scientific prodigy.{{cite magazine | last=Holloway | first=Marguerite | date=April 1996 | title=Evolutionary Theories for Everyday Life | magazine=Scientific American | url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolutionary-theories-for-everyday/ | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990221074404/http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7Erjh9u/profet2.html | archive-date=21 February 1999 | url-status=live}}{{cite magazine | last=Bloch | first=Hannah | title=School Isn't My Kind of Thing | magazine=Time | date=4 October 1993 | url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979304,00.html}}{{cite magazine |last=Plummer |first=William |date=11 October 1993 |title=A curse no more | magazine=People Magazine |volume=40 |number=15 |url=https://people.com/archive/a-curse-no-more-vol-40-no-15/}}{{cite magazine |last=Rudavsky |first=Shari |date=May 1994 | title=Margie Profet: Co-evolution |type=Interview | magazine=Omni | url=http://www.astralgia.com/webportfolio/omnimoment/archives/interviews/profet.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080315173845/http://www.astralgia.com/webportfolio/omnimoment/archives/interviews/profet.html | archive-date=15 March 2008 | url-status=unfit}}
Profet went on to publish two equally controversial bestselling books, 1995's Protecting Your Baby-To-Be: Preventing Birth Defects in the First Trimester and a 1997 follow up, Pregnancy Sickness: Using Your Body's Natural Defenses to Protect Your Baby-To-Be. Supporters—including U.C. Santa Barbara anthropologist Donald Symons and U.C. Berkeley toxicologist Bruce Ames—considered her work a pioneering analysis of evolutionary theory in a never-before-studied, everyday context. In 2000, Cornell University researchers Samuel Flaxman and Paul Sherman provided evidence supporting Profet's hypothesis that "morning sickness" is an evolved trait that protects the mother and her fetus against toxins ingested by the mother.{{cite journal |last1=Flaxman |first1=Samuel M. |last2=Sherman |first2=Paul |title=Morning sickness: a mechanism for protecting mother and embryo |journal=Quarterly Review of Biology |date=June 2000 |volume=75 |issue=2 |page=113-148 |doi=10.1086/393377 |pmid=10858967 |publisher=University of Chicago Press}}
In 2008, Paul Sherman and Janet Shellman-Sherman found that Profet's theory that allergies are evolved ways to expel toxins and carcinogens—the so-called "toxin" or "prophylaxis hypothesis"—may explain a mysterious observation dating back to 1953 and replicated many times since: People with allergies are at much lower risk for some types of cancers, especially malignancies of tissues that are directly exposed to the external environment, even including the brain tumor glioma.{{cite journal | last1=Sherman | first1=Paul W. | last2=Holland | first2=Erica | last3=Sherman | first3=Janet Shellman | title=Allergies: Their Role in Cancer Prevention | journal=The Quarterly Review of Biology | publisher=University of Chicago Press | volume=83 | issue=4 | year=2008 | issn=0033-5770 | doi=10.1086/592850 | pages=339–362| pmid=19143335 | s2cid=42767681 }}{{cite journal | last=Martin | first=M. | title=Research Reinforces Potential Allergies-Glioma Connection | journal=JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute | publisher=Oxford University Press | volume=104 | issue=5 | date=20 February 2012 | issn=0027-8874 | doi=10.1093/jnci/djs153 | pages=353–356| pmid=22349202 | doi-access=free }}
While research has for decades supported Profet's prophylaxis hypothesis applied to carcinogens, Stanford University Medical School and Yale University Medical School researchers in 2013 reported similar experimental support applying it to toxins, specifically bee venom.{{Cite journal|last1=Tsai|first1=Mindy|last2=Starkl|first2=Philipp|last3=Marichal|first3=Thomas|last4=Galli|first4=Stephen J|date=October 2015|title=Testing the 'toxin hypothesis of allergy': mast cells, IgE, and innate and acquired immune responses to venoms|journal=Current Opinion in Immunology|language=en|volume=36|pages=80–87|doi=10.1016/j.coi.2015.07.001|pmc=4593748|pmid=26210895}} Bee venom induces allergic reactions in some people that can include anaphylactic shock and death. Both studies were published in the journal Immunology.
Yale immunology researchers Noah W. Palm, Ruslan Medzhitov, et al. reported that Phospholipase A2—the major allergen in bee venom -- "is sensed by the innate immune system" and induces an immune response in mice that can protect against potentially fatal venom doses.{{cite journal| doi=10.1016/j.immuni.2013.10.006 | pmid=24210353 | pmc=3852615 | volume=39 | issue=5 | title=Bee Venom Phospholipase A2 Induces a Primary Type 2 Response that Is Dependent on the Receptor ST2 and Confers Protective Immunity | year=2013 | journal=Immunity | pages=976–985 | last1 = Palm | first1 = Noah W. | last2 = Rosenstein | first2 = Rachel K. | last3 = Yu | first3 = Shuang | last4 = Schenten | first4 = Dominik D. | last5 = Florsheim | first5 = Esther | last6 = Medzhitov | first6 = Ruslan}}
Likewise, injecting mice with a small dose of bee venom conferred immunity to a much larger, fatal dose, Stanford researchers Stephen Galli, Thomas Marichal, and Philipp Starkl found. "Our findings support the hypothesis that this kind of venom-specific, IgE-associated, adaptive immune response developed, at least in evolutionary terms, to protect the host against potentially toxic amounts of venom, such as would happen if the animal encountered a whole nest of bees, or in the event of a snakebite," Galli explained.{{cite journal| doi=10.1016/j.immuni.2013.10.005 | pmid=24210352 | pmc=4164235 | volume=39 | issue=5 | title=A Beneficial Role for Immunoglobulin E in Host Defense against Honeybee Venom | year=2013 | journal=Immunity | pages=963–975 | last1 = Marichal | first1 = Thomas | last2 = Starkl | first2 = Philipp | last3 = Reber | first3 = Laurent L. | last4 = Kalesnikoff | first4 = Janet | last5 = Oettgen | first5 = Hans C. | last6 = Tsai | first6 = Mindy | last7 = Metz | first7 = Martin | last8 = Galli | first8 = Stephen J.}}{{cite web |last=Sharlach |first=Molly |title=Bee sting allergy could be a defense response gone haywire, scientists say | website=Stanford Medicine News Center | date=24 October 2013 | url=http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/10/bee-sting-allergy-could-be-a-defense-response-gone-haywire-scientists-say.html | access-date=20 November 2019}}{{cite web |last=Foley |first=James A. | title=Severe Allergies to Bee Stings may be Malfunctioning Evolutionary Response | work=Nature World News | date=25 October 2013 | url=https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4618/20131025/severe-allergies-bee-stings-malfunctioning-evolutionary-response.htm}}
The 2011 play The How and the Why by Sarah Treem draws on Profet's work on menstruation.{{cite news|last1=Gold|first1=Sylviane|title=Women on the Verge of an Explanation: A Review of 'The How and the Why,' at Penguin Rep Theater|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/nyregion/a-review-of-the-how-and-the-why-at-penguin-rep-theater.html|work=The New York Times|date=12 October 2012}}
Disappearance and discovery
Profet vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts: according to friends and colleagues, in 2005; according to family members, before 2005. Her whereabouts were unknown for more than seven years until she was found in Boston, Massachusetts, after a long ordeal with poverty and illness. She was reunited with her family in Southern California on May 16, 2012, as a result of nationwide attention from a May 2012 Psychology Today article.{{cite web |last=Martin |first=Mike |date=1 May 2012 |title=The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius | website=Psychology Today | url=http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201205/the-mysterious-case-the-vanishing-genius |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130201011852/http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/94052 |archive-date=2013-02-01}}{{cite web |last=Martin |first=Mike |title=Margie Profet's Unfinished Symphony | work=Weekly Scientist | date=29 May 2012 |orig-year=2009 | url=http://weeklyscientist.blogspot.com/2009/07/margie-profets-unfinished-symphony.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131024213435/http://weeklyscientist.blogspot.com/2009/07/margie-profets-unfinished-symphony.html | archive-date=24 October 2013 | url-status=dead | access-date=20 November 2019}}{{cite web |last1=Maher |first1=Brendan |title=Missing biologist surfaces, reunites with family |url=http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces-reunites-with-family.html |website=blogs.nature.com |date=31 May 2012}}
See also
References
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{{Evolutionary psychologists}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Profet, Margie}}
Category:2000s missing person cases
Category:American non-fiction writers
Category:Formerly missing American people
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:Missing person cases in Massachusetts