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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, allergies and morning sickness. 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 received a political philosophy degree 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.〔(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,'' July 31, 1994〕 Several years later, she returned to Harvard, once again to study math. When Profet won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1993,〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1142789/k.9619/Fellows_List__P.htm )〕 international media took notice. ''New York Times'' reporter Natalie Angier called Profet's theory that menstruation protected the female mammal's reproductive canals a "radical new view".〔(Radical New View of Role of Menstruation ), ''New York Times,'' September 21, 1993〕 ''Scientific American,'' ''Time,'' ''Omni,'' and even ''People Magazine'' all followed with in-depth profiles of the 35-year-old "maverick" scientific prodigy.〔(Margie Profet: Evolutionary Theories for Everyday Life ), ''Scientific American,'' April 1996〕〔("School Isn't My Kind of Thing" ) ''Time'', Sept. 4, 1993〕〔(A Curse No More ) ''People Magazine''〕〔(Margie Profet: Co-Evolution ) ''Omni,'' May 1994〕 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.〔(Allergies: Their Role in Cancer Prevention ) ''Quarterly Review of Biology,'' December, 2008〕〔(Research Reinforces Potential Allergies-Glioma Connection ) ''Journal of the National Cancer Institute,'' February 20, 2012〕 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. Bee venom induces allergic reactions in some people than 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. .〔(Bee Venom Phospholipase A2 Induces a Primary Type 2 Response that Is Dependent on the Receptor ST2 and Confers Protective Immunity ) ''Immunology,'' Volume 39, Issue 5, 14 November 2013〕 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.〔(Beneficial Role for Immunoglobulin E in Host Defense against Honeybee Venom ) ''Immunology,'' Volume 39, Issue 5, 14 November 2013〕〔(sting allergy could be a defense response gone haywire, scientists say ) ''Stanford Medicine News,'' October 2013〕〔(Allergies to Bee Stings may be Malfunctioning Evolutionary Response ) ''Nature World News,'' October 2013〕 The 2011 play ''The How and the Why'' by Sarah Treem draws on Profet's work on menstruation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Margie Profet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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