So Congress started investigating the fact the Jarvik hadn't really ever prescribed Lipitor, or any other drug, in spite of getting over a million bucks to star in Pfizer's commercials.
Nor had he really invented that first artifical heart (note misleading title of his biography to the left), and the ads had to be changed to point out he invented the "Jarvik artificial heart" after his former colleagues complained.
Nor was Jarvik athletic enough or had the right arm coordination to enable him to row; the film crew had to use a body double.
That was enough to make Pfizer pull the commercials today and for BrandweekNRX to admit that we were wrong when we wrote "U.S. Congress: Don't mess with Dr. Jarvik!"
We admit, we were so, so wrong in defending Pfizer, since we now know that Pfizer misrepresented Jarvik's role as the inventor of the artificial heart, since Pfizer misrepresented Jarvik's role as an athletic rower, and since Pfizer misrepresented Jarvik's ability to prescribe Lipitor, and we also now know that Pfizer paid Jarvik over a million bucks to allow them to do all these misrepresentations.
You'd think when we for once write something postitive about Pfizer, they wouldn't immediately disprove us by demonstrating how crooked they really are, but they did.
"Dr. Rost is a pharma litigation consultant and pharmaceutical marketing expert. He is also the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.
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