Congress Wastes Time Investigating Dr. Jarvik
You’ve probably seen the Lipitor commercials featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, who talks about how he’d planned to go into architecture until his father suffered a heart attack. Now, he says, he’s devoted his life to helping improve heart health.
Incidentally, he is also married to the world’s smartest woman, Marilyn Vos Savant… so you men think about what his life must be like living with a woman who really is smarter than everyone else.
The ads make him look pretty darned healthy himself. In one, he jogs alongside his much younger son keeping pace, stride for stride. In another, he rows across a beautiful lake. He looks healthy enough but, as he says in the commercial, he takes Lipitor himself for his high cholesterol. Still, he’s decidedly trim and, at 61 years old, certainly looks spry even though a longtime collaborator says “he’s about as much of an outdoorsman as Woody Allen”.
And that fact — that he isn’t a jock — has prompted two House of Representatives members to investigate Jarvik. Jarvik, they claim, used a body double in the rowing commercial, so they’ve demanded that Lipitor’s manufacturer, Pfizer, provide information relating to the commercial’s script.
Congress is also incensed that Jarvik’s appearance in the commercial appears as if he’s giving medical advice. Jarvik, you see, received a Master’s for medical engineering from New York University and an M.D. from the University of Utah. He is not licensed to practice medicine, however, nor is there any indication that he’s attempted to obtain a license.
Because he’s a scientist and an engineer.
That point is apparently lost on Congressional members who seem to believe that consumers will somehow be mislead. But by what exactly? Someone selling a medication in a commercial? Last time I checked, even if a viewer thought was intrigued by an ad for a medication s/he would still have to ask their doctor to prescribe it. So where’s the harm?
Oh, wait, that’s right: there’s an election coming up, which means Representatives dream up crises to look like they’re worth their paychecks. Silly me.
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I’m much more concerned about the obviously devious way in which the camera crops off his bald head in an attempt to make him look more vigorous. I think Congress should look into that.
I’m actually kind of grateful we don’t have to look at the top of his head, to be honest. I’ve never seen so few strands of hair nurtured along so carefully, and plastered down so well. Really, he’d look better if he’d just shave the dang thing.
Damn! I didnt know he was married to her,I love reading the questions people send in to her
Me, too. She’s so skilled at explaining complicated things so the rest of us can understand them.
But can you imagine trying to argue with a woman held the Guinness World Record for Highest IQ for 5 years running? I imagine victories, though maybe few and far between, would feel extra sweet.
I think cholesterol lowering drugs and anyone who promotes them should be investigated. The cholesterol myth is as great a fraud as global warming.
They could care less about his commercial - it’s yet one more way to get a drug company in their grip and show the world how they can squeeze the evil beings. *sigh*
As for drug commercials - I wish we could go back to the days when they couldn’t advertise prescription drugs, I used to be a nurse, and after listening to the recitation of the side effects (I used to have to memorize that crap back in nursing school) - it makes me wonder what the drug companies actually get out of it.
I can’t say I’d miss the commercials at all, either.