Continuing fire for Robert Jarvik

There are three issues here, excluding the overall issue of whether or not the FDA should even allow direct to consumer (DTC) television ads:
1. Should celebrity endorsements be allowed? If you are going to have DTC ads, then there should be no problem with celebrity endorsements. Patients who may be reluctant to take a drug or address a medical concern may be more willing if they see a celebrity they identify.
2. Should physicians endorse products in DTC ads? I would argue that this should not be allowed. A physician’s primary goal should be to their patients, and this conflict of interest is too strong in a DTC ad for a specific product. The exception might be a non-branded ad for a disease state, i.e. Pfizer has a DTC on heart disease risk and uses a real physician to ask patients to ask their doctor about their cholesterol numbers.
3. Is Pfizer being deceptive by using Jarvik, who is and MD but not a practicing physician? What about the use of other celebrity MD’s like Oprah’s Dr. OZ, a journalist like Dr. Gupta, etc. This is a tougher one. The Pfizer ad never says Jarvik is a practicing MD, and as the inventor of the artificial heart, probably knows something about heart disease. However, patients may not recognize this, and in fact think Dr. Jarvik is one of the nation’s most respected cardiologists. I would recommend that PhRMA stay away from using real MD’s to market their products. With enough uproar, they may lose the ability to use DTC TV ads altogether.