On October 24, Dr. Joseph Jacobs was appointed full-time director of the OfÞce of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health. He replaced Dr. Stephen Groft, who served as temporary director from the inception of the ofÞce last year.
Dr. Jacobs, 46, is the immediate past president of the Association of American Indian Physicians. He has a long-term interest in native and shamanistic methods of healing. Joe grew up on a St. Regis Mohawk reservation in upstate New York, where medical
practice consisted of an amalgam of Western and traditional methods.
He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia, an MD from Yale University School of Medicine as well as a Masters of Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business. He has also been a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Fellow and a Director of the Indian Health Service. More recently, Joe was medical director for new program development for the Aetna Life Insurance Company. (He assures us he had no connection with Aetna's lawsuit against Dr. S.R. Burzynski of Houston.
