A Profile of Dr. Jennifer Jacobs
Presenter for CCFH’s October 23, 2024 research webinar
By Alan Cassels
After interviewing Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, one of the world’s most prominent promoters of high-quality research into homeopathy, I am left with one main insight: “The people who say homeopathy isn’t evidence-based haven’t actually read the research.”
I put that sentence to her in the course of our zoom conversation from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Jacobs’ story is enlightening, and inspirational and reminds us that in today’s pharma-dominated medical culture there is still a very rocky road towards educating the public about the benefits of homeopathic medicine.
Ever since her early days at medical school, and the first years of her practice, Dr Jennifer Jacobs experienced a growing disillusionment with the practice of modern medicine. She was driven to seek out alternatives and soon became attracted by midwifery. While attending a midwifery conference early in her career she had what one would call an “A-ha” moment.
“This was where the proverbial light went on,” she said, referring to a lecture at that midwifery conference on the subject of homeopathy.
“It just made so much sense to me. That the body has its own innate healing ability and you should be giving medicine to help potentiate that,” she told me. “The drugs we were using only covered up the symptoms and came with side effects.”
That lecture was something that not only changed the course of her life as she devoted the rest of her career to studying and practicing homeopathy but also drove her to become one of homeopathy’s most serious research methodologists.
This enthusiasm for homeopathy led to both her and her husband practicing it for their entire careers, yet more than that, Jennifer knew that with proper research the practice of homeopathy could gain more legitimacy in the medical world. In order for homeopathic research to be respected, Dr. Jacobs knew that she needed training in epidemiology and so she took advanced training to help her design and conduct proper
trials. She rose to eventually become a Clinical Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine and over time became one of the leading proponents of high-quality research for homeopathy.
In the course of our conversation, I really warmed up to Dr. Jacobs when I discovered she wrote a book called “Do You Really Need That Pill?”, a question that neatly captures my own sentiments about our excessive, illogical and harmful obsession with prescription drugs, which I’ve studied and criticized in numerous books over the last 30 years. I think that her book, written for the lay person, will help engender even more ‘healthy skepticism’ that our society needs, burdened as we are by a medical system slavishly and unthinkingly addicted to pharma’s potions.
I asked her if it bothered her that the mainstream view put out there by Big Pharma and modern medicine is that homeopathy isn’t evidence-based.
“The research base is actually very extensive,” she told me. “For example, the Homeopathy Research Institute based in London, has massive bibliographies covering homeopathic literature from around the world. Many studies are very rigorous and they continue to help patients.”
What’s a good example, I wondered? That was very easy to find.
In terms of helping suffering patients one need look no further than the massive global treatment demands for diarrheal disease, which kills almost half a million children in the developing world every year. By accessing effective and affordable treatments for acute diarrhea much death and suffering could be alleviated because diarrhea is the leading cause of malnutrition in the world. While much of the common diarrhea found in poor countries can be prevented through increasing access to clean drinking-water and providing adequate sanitation and hygiene there is still a strong need for medical intervention and it would be a major public health advance if simple, effective treatments could be used.
Thankfully such treatments exist in the form of homeopathic treatments that have been studied in rigorous, blinded randomized trials, considered the ‘gold standard’ of evidence. An early seminal study conducted on the use of homeopathic treatments for acute childhood diarrhea was published in 1994 in the journal Pediatrics. This study conducted in Nicaragua has been replicated in other developing countries around the world and its lead author is Dr. Jennifer Jacobs.
One of the criticisms I have repeatedly heard about homeopathy is that it produces nothing more than a placebo effect, given the diluted nature of the homeopathic agent.
I have pondered that criticism and I have two immediate responses. The first is: “if this is true, then so what?” Which is to say, we know that placebos produce effects that are often meaningful and important to patients. Furthermore, the placebo effect is safe, and people don’t die or become seriously ill being in the placebo arm of a major drug trial (which you can’t say about the intervention arms of most drug trials). The second
response I have is this: Is it not the ultimate manifestation of the Hippocratic Oath to first “do no harm.” I could be wrong but I can’t think of any single drug from the world’s apothecary that more properly embraces the principle of not doing harm than homeopathy.
I asked Dr. Jacobs about the overview of trials, the meta-analyses that exist around homeopathy. She pointed out that there have been numerous meta-analyses done and that this gives even more confidence that homeopathy is a proven, research-based practice.
The most famous one is by Dr. Klaus Linde, a German researcher who published a meta-analytical study of homeopathy in the Lancet in 1997 looking at 119 homeopathy trials. Eighty-nine of those trials had enough data to be included in the statistical analysis, and this covered more than 10,000 patients. The combined “odds ratios” (where there was 95% confidence that the results were not due to chance compared to placebo) was found to be 2.45. This means the people in the active homeopathy arms of the trials had a more than double chance of having a benefit compared to those taking the placebo.
While Linde published a later study that was more critical of homeopathy (where higher quality studies had poorer results) that does not take away from the fact that there was proven efficacy of homeopathic interventions in a broad range of areas including allergy, dermatology, bruises, cramps, stomach and intestinal complaints, sprains, neurological issues, gynecologic issues, childbirth, asthma, upper respiratory illnesses, and rheumatology.
Today we know that many Canadians choose homeopathy. It is practiced around the world and is a central part of health care systems in many other countries. Thanks to people like Dr. Jennifer Jacobs, and the thousands of other homeopathic researchers around the world, patients can have access to effective, safe and affordable alternatives to the prescription drug dominated world of medicine in which we are forced to swim.
My conversation with Jennifer Jacobs, probably one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet in terms of the evidence around homeopathy was not only intellectually enlightening, but also left me on a hopeful note. She has done an incredible service to the world in improving the standards of research that informs her profession, and in turn has expanded the global appeal of homeopathy.
As more people become aware that there are high-quality randomized control trials of homeopathy published in many respected journals, we have a quick answer to those who say homeopathy has no evidence base. I am left comforted with the same solid retort: People making that claim have simply decided not to read the evidence.
Alan Cassels
Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher in Victoria, BC and the author of numerous books about drug marketing and evidence-based medicine.
On October 23, 2024 Dr. Jennifer Jacobs will be speaking at a research webinar sponsored by the Canadian Coalition for Homeopathy whose mission is to serve as a unified voice for homeopathy in Canada, where stakeholders in the homeopathy community including consumers, professional homeopaths, manufacturers and educational institutions can meet and share ideas.
Dr. Jennifer Jacobs appears in this short video interview, discussing her research.