Jarvik’s Lipitor ads bear scrutiny

Dr. Robert K. Jarvik may play a rower on TV, but he’s not a rower.

And he may not even be the doctor he seems to be in his ubiquitous ads for Lipitor, a cholesterol drug from Pfizer.

Critics of the advertisements point out that Jarvik, the inventor of an artificial heart, is a medical school graduate but not a practicing physician.

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“In the ads, Dr. Jarvik appears to be giving medical advice, but apparently, he has never obtained a license to practice or prescribe medicine,” said Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., in a press release.

Dingell is the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is investigating the use of celebrity endorsements for prescription drugs.

According to documents released by the committee, the company is paying Jarvik a minimum of $1,350,000 to be a spokesman for the drug.

Jarvik and Pfizer have defended the ads.

“The statements included in the ads fairly represent the scientific truths about Lipitor, which the public has a right to know, and which Pfizer is entitled to teach,” Jarvik said in a press release last month.

Jarvik, 61,went on to say that his father’s death from heart disease at age 62 had led him to become a doctor and that he is “dedicated to the battle against heart disease.”

Pfizer’s patent for Lipitor, its top-selling drug, expires in March 2010. Sales of the drug have increased since the Jarvik commercials first aired two years ago.

Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd., a New York City advertising group, created the first of the Jarvik testimonials. The ad opens with a person who looks much like Jarvik sculling on a lake.

As the person seems to row away from the camera at high speed, a narrator’s voice says, “Dr. Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the artificial heart.” At the same time, those words flash across the screen as if they were identifying the rower.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the rower is, in fact, a Jarvik look-alike. Dennis Williams, a Seattle rower and professional photographer, did the sculling in the commercial, which was filmed on Lake Crescent in Washington state.

A Jarvik collaborator, Dr. O.H. Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute, told the Times that Jarvik as rower was far-fetched.

“He’s about as much of an outdoorsman as Woody Allen,” Frazier said. “He can’t row.”

Technically, it may even be misleading to say that Jarvik is “the inventor of the artificial heart.”

In 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley, a Texas surgeon, implanted an artificial heart created by Dr. Domingo Santo Liotta into a patient who survived for 60 hours.

Jarvik began working on an artificial heart in the 1970s at the University of Utah under the guidance of Dr. Willem Kolff, a pioneer in the field.

Jarvik developed the first permanent artificial heart with any significant success, the Jarvik-7 that was first implanted in 1982.

Barney Clark, a dentist, lived for 112 days after the implant. The longest surviving recipient of the Jarvik-7 lived 620 days.

Jarvik, who is president of Jarvik Heart Inc. in New York City, has had much greater success with the Jarvik 2000FlowMaker.

A small heart-assist pump, it has been implanted in more than 200 patients, according to the Jarvik Heart website. One of these patients has lived for more than seven years with the device.

Jarvik’s wife, Marilyn Vos Savant, a Parade magazine columnist who is said to have the world’s highest I.Q., serves as the chief financial officer of Jarvik Heart.

Update: On Feb. 25, Pfizer announced it was ending the ad campaign for Lipitor featuring Jarvik. “The way in which we presented Dr. Jarvik in these ads, has, unfortunately, let to misimpressions and distractions from our primary goal of encouraging patient and physician dialogue on the leading cause of death in the world –cardiovascular disease,” a company official said in a statement.