Continuing fire for Robert Jarvik

Congress is getting into the act, wondering if Robert Jarvik is qualified to pitch Lipitor:

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

Comments

Michael Rack, MD
I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV
Dr. Matthew Mintz
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.
Shaun
Its interesting that when he spoke at the press conference after the artificial heart was placed in a patient, he was wearing surgical scrubs and headwear as if he was the surgeon that placed the heart in the patient!
http://medicalweblog.blogspot.com

Continuing fire for Robert Jarvik

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