Area Lake Conspires with Big Pharma
Thank goodness for a Congressional committee looking into misleading pharmaceutical ads to detail the shady saga that is pseudo-jock Dr. Jarvik.
You know Jarvik from the Lipitor ads: late 50s, receding hairline, cornerstone of Pfizer’s $258 million cholesterol-lowering campaign. Apparently he’s a fraud. Well, when it comes to rowing.
We became suspicious of Dr. Jarvik the moment the ad with him jogging with his robotically stiff son came out. "These guys don’t jog," we thought. His son doesn’t even move his arms when he runs. Nothing screams "not a real athlete" like somebody who awkwardly runs with their arms at their side.
Dr. Jarvik didn’t look the part of the outdoorsman and his goofy son certainly didn’t help sell the image of the healthy Lipitor lifestyle to anybody but the most desperate of cholesterol-fearing crowd.
So the NY Times revelation that the rowing scenes in his commercial were actually performed by a stunt double sculler on Washington’s Lake Crescent near Port Angeles caught nobody at Seattlest by surprise. Coupled with the fact Dr. Jarvik isn't a cardiologist or even licensed to practice medicine, we're beginning to wonder if anything about Lipitor is legit.
