Margie Profet
Margie Profet | |
---|---|
Born | Berkeley, California, U.S. | August 7, 1958
Alma mater | Harvard University University of California, Berkeley |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Evolutionary biology |
Margaret J. "Margie" Profet (born August 7, 1958) is an American
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.[5] Several years later, she returned to Harvard, once again to study math.
When Profet won a
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 2008, Cornell University researchers Paul and Janet Shellman-Sherman found 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, most notably the brain tumor glioma.[12][13]
While research has for decades supported Profet's prophylaxis hypothesis applied to carcinogens,
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.[15]
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.[16][17][18]
The 2011 play The How and the Why by Sarah Treem draws on Profet's work on menstruation.[19]
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.[20][21][22]
See also
- List of solved missing person cases
References
- S2CID 23738569.
- S2CID 5648170.
- ^ Profet, Margie (1988). "The Evolution of Pregnancy Sickness as Protection to the Embryo Against Pleistocene Teratogens". Evolutionary Theory. 8: 177–190.
- ISBN 978-0-19-506023-2.
- ^ Mcdermott, Terry (31 July 1994). "Living - 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". Seattle Times Newspaper.
- ^ "Fellows List – P". MacArthur Foundation. Archived from the original on 12 April 2011. Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ Angier, Natalie (21 September 1993). "Radical New View of Role of Menstruation". The New York Times.
- ^ Holloway, Marguerite (April 1996). "Evolutionary Theories for Everyday Life". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 21 February 1999.
- ^ Bloch, Hannah (4 October 1993). "School Isn't My Kind of Thing". Time.
- ^ Plummer, William (11 October 1993). "A curse no more". People Magazine. Vol. 40, no. 15.
- ^ Rudavsky, Shari (May 1994). "Margie Profet: Co-evolution". Omni (Interview). Archived from the original on 15 March 2008.
{{cite magazine}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - S2CID 42767681.
- PMID 22349202.
- PMID 26210895.
- PMID 24210353.
- PMID 24210352.
- ^ Sharlach, Molly (24 October 2013). "Bee sting allergy could be a defense response gone haywire, scientists say". Stanford Medicine News Center. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- ^ Foley, James A. (25 October 2013). "Severe Allergies to Bee Stings may be Malfunctioning Evolutionary Response". Nature World News.
- ^ Gold, Sylviane (12 October 2012). "Women on the Verge of an Explanation: A Review of 'The How and the Why,' at Penguin Rep Theater". The New York Times.
- ^ Martin, Mike (1 May 2012). "The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius". Psychology Today. Archived from the original on 2013-02-01.
- ^ Martin, Mike (29 May 2012) [2009]. "Margie Profet's Unfinished Symphony". Weekly Scientist. Archived from the original on 24 October 2013. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- ^ Maher, Brendan (31 May 2012). "Missing biologist surfaces, reunites with family". blogs.nature.com.