Paging Dr. Jarvik

We no longer have to put up with those ads for Vytorin and Zetia after cinical trial results questioned the efficacy of those drugs in controlling plaque. Soon we may be free of those Lipitor ads featuring Robert Jarvik. This time it is not because the cholesterol lowering drug has been shown less effective than advertised. It is the use of Jarvik that has caused critics to accuse the drug maker Pfizer of overselling its product.

          Jarvik was the inventor of the first artificial heart. Few remember that after the clinical trial testing that device proved so ethically troubling, there was a fifteen year moratorium on artificial heart human experiments. In any event, the implication of using Dr. Jarvik as the pitchman is that the inventor of the artificial heart must know more about the health of real hearts than just about anyone. So we should listen to what he says about heart disease. The problem is that while Jarvic has a medical degree, he is not a cardiologist or even licensed to practice medicine. And while he looks fit rowing in his scull, presumably in part from the drug,  the truth is the good doctor is not a rower and Pfizer used a double to do the actual rowing in the ad. “He’s about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen,” said a longtime collaborator, Dr. O. H. Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute. “He can’t row.”

          The controversy has renewed the debate over direct advertising of prescription drugs to consumers. Some Congressmen have suggested Dr. Jarvik come in to testify and explain whether the ads misrepresent material information to potential users of the drug. As soon as they finish with the steroid issue in baseball, I am sure they will get to it.

Alan Milstein