Margie Profet

Margaret J. "Margie" Profet (born August 7, 1958)

is an American evolutionary biologist with no formal Margie Profet
biology training who created a decade-long Born August 7, 1958
controversy when she published her findings on the Berkeley, California, U.S.
role of Darwinian evolution in menstruation,[1] Alma mater Harvard University
allergies[2] and morning sickness.[3][4] She argued that University of California, Berkeley
these three processes had evolved to eliminate Scientific career
pathogens, carcinogens and other toxins from the body.
Fields Evolutionary biology

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 MacArthur Fellowship in 1993,[6] 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".[7] Scientific American, Time, Omni, and even People Magazine
all followed with in-depth profiles of the 35-year-old "maverick" scientific prodigy.[8][9][10][11]

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,
Stanford University Medical School and Yale University Medical School researchers in 2013 reported
similar experimental support applying it to toxins, specifically bee venom.[14] 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.[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
1. Profet, Margie (September 1993). "Menstruation as a Defense Against Pathogens
Transported by Sperm". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 68 (3). Chicago, Illinois: The
University of Chicago Press: 335–386. doi:10.1086/418170 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F418
170). ISSN 0033-5770 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0033-5770). JSTOR 2831191 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/2831191). PMID 8210311 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/821031
1). S2CID 23738569 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:23738569).
2. Profet, Margie (March 1991). "The Function of Allergy: Immunological Defense Against
Toxins". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 66 (1). Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago
Press: 23–62. doi:10.1086/417049 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F417049). ISSN 0033-5770 (h
ttps://search.worldcat.org/issn/0033-5770). JSTOR 2830331 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/28
30331). PMID 2052671 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2052671). S2CID 5648170 (http
s://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:5648170).
3. Profet, Margie (1988). "The Evolution of Pregnancy Sickness as Protection to the Embryo
Against Pleistocene Teratogens". Evolutionary Theory. 8: 177–190.
4. Profet, Margie (1992). "Chapter 8: Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to
Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens". In Barkow, Jerome H.; Cosmides, Leda; Tooby, John
(eds.). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford
University Press. pp. 327–366. ISBN 978-0-19-506023-2.
 5. Mcdermott, Terry (31 July 1994). "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" (https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19940731&slug=1
922927). Seattle Times Newspaper.
6. "Fellows List – P" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110412005752/http://www.macfound.org/s
ite/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1142789/k.9619/Fellows_List__P.htm). MacArthur Foundation.
Archived from the original (http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1142789/k.9619/
Fellows_List__P.htm) on 12 April 2011. Retrieved 2 April 2011.
7. Angier, Natalie (21 September 1993). "Radical New View of Role of Menstruation" (https://w
ww.nytimes.com/1993/09/21/science/radical-new-view-of-role-of-menstruation.html). The
New York Times.
8. Holloway, Marguerite (April 1996). "Evolutionary Theories for Everyday Life" (https://www.sci
entificamerican.com/article/evolutionary-theories-for-everyday/). Scientific American.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/19990221074404/http://www.people.virginia.edu/%7E
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me/magazine/article/0,9171,979304,00.html). Time.
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-no-more-vol-40-no-15/). People Magazine. Vol. 40, no. 15.
11. Rudavsky, Shari (May 1994). "Margie Profet: Co-evolution" (https://web.archive.org/web/200
80315173845/http://www.astralgia.com/webportfolio/omnimoment/archives/interviews/profet.
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12. Sherman, Paul W.; Holland, Erica; Sherman, Janet Shellman (2008). "Allergies: Their Role
in Cancer Prevention". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 83 (4). University of Chicago
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13. Martin, M. (20 February 2012). "Research Reinforces Potential Allergies-Glioma
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Esther; Medzhitov, Ruslan (2013). "Bee Venom Phospholipase A2 Induces a Primary Type 2
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4164235). Immunity. 39 (5): 963–975. doi:10.1016/j.immuni.2013.10.005 (https://doi.org/10.
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17. Sharlach, Molly (24 October 2013). "Bee sting allergy could be a defense response gone
haywire, scientists say" (http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2013/10/bee-sting-allergy-co
uld-be-a-defense-response-gone-haywire-scientists-say.html). Stanford Medicine News
Center. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
18. Foley, James A. (25 October 2013). "Severe Allergies to Bee Stings may be Malfunctioning
Evolutionary Response" (https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4618/20131025/severe-
allergies-bee-stings-malfunctioning-evolutionary-response.htm). Nature World News.
19. Gold, Sylviane (12 October 2012). "Women on the Verge of an Explanation: A Review of
'The How and the Why,' at Penguin Rep Theater" (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/nyre
gion/a-review-of-the-how-and-the-why-at-penguin-rep-theater.html). The New York Times.
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hologytoday.com/articles/201205/the-mysterious-case-the-vanishing-genius). Psychology
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21. Martin, Mike (29 May 2012) [2009]. "Margie Profet's Unfinished Symphony" (https://web.arc
hive.org/web/20131024213435/http://weeklyscientist.blogspot.com/2009/07/margie-profets-
unfinished-symphony.html). Weekly Scientist. Archived from the original (http://weeklyscienti
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22. Maher, Brendan (31 May 2012). "Missing biologist surfaces, reunites with family" (http://blog
s.nature.com/news/2012/05/missing-biologist-surfaces-reunites-with-family.html).
blogs.nature.com.

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