Location
Age
Area of FocusAbout Margie's Work
Margie Profet is an independent evolutionary biologist whose primary work has been in an emerging field that synthesizes evolutionary biology with the health sciences.
The focus of her research has been to understand the function of certain physiological mechanisms that on the surface have appeared anomalous, including pregnancy sickness, allergy, and menstruation. She has done significant research on the function of allergy as a defense against certain naturally occurring toxins such as venoms and those found in certain types of plants. She is the author of Protecting Your Baby-to-Be: Preventing Birth Defects in the First Trimester (1995) and Pregnancy Sickness: Using Your Body's Natural Defenses to Protect Your Baby-to-Be (1997). Profet’s articles have appeared in such publications as the Quarterly Review of Biology and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Her chapter, “Pregnancy Sickness as Adaptation: A Deterrent to Maternal Ingestion of Teratogens,” was published in the edited volume, The Adapted Mind (1992).
Biography
An independent researcher with a new focus on mathematics, Profet served previously as a research associate at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a visiting scholar in the Astronomy Department at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Profet received a B.A. (1980) from Harvard University, and a B.A. (1985) from the University of California, Berkeley.
Last updated January 1, 2005
Published on July 1, 1993
