I'm not a rower, but I play one on TV

The New York Times has run several stories about Dr. Robert Jarvik’s role as spokesman for Pfizer’s Lipitor. See Drug Ads Raise Questions for Heart Pioneer, focusing on one specific ad:

The ads have depicted him, among other outdoorsy pursuits, rowing a one-man racing shell swiftly across a mountain lake. “When diet and exercise aren’t enough, adding Lipitor significantly lowers cholesterol,” Dr. Jarvik says in the ad.

There are two problems: First, though he is renowned for his work on the artificial heart, Dr. Jarvik is not a cardiologist and has no license to practice medicine, so his qualifications to recommend a heart drug are questionable. Second, he doesn’t row; a stunt double did the rowing. Dr. David J. Triggle, “a pharmacologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo who has written about drug advertising,” criticized the ad: “… I think it’s sending a rather dishonest message — that, he himself taking Lipitor is healthy enough to row up and down whatever stream he was rowing.”

More: Committee Investigates Ad Tactics for Lipitor. Congress wants information about payments to the stunt doubles in Jarvik’s ads, though I don’t understand what payment has to do with the ads’ potential for deception. What Congress is really interested in, it appears, is whether stunt doubles were used in ads other than the rowing ad on which the Times initially reported.

The FTC has acted against false demonstrations that aren’t disclosed as simulations, even when the simulation accurately reflects results that would be achieved in practice. See FTC v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 380 U.S. 374 (1965). But not-Jarvik’s rowing isn’t really a result of Lipitor, nor would a reasonable person expect to be able to row after taking Lipitor, so the usual rule isn’t directly applicable. Still, the idea that Jarvik is active and athletic enough to row seems to testify to Lipitor’s merits, like a before/after picture in a weight-loss ad, and at a minimum disclosure that the ad used a body double would seem to be required.

The FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising say, among other things, “the endorsement may neither be presented out of context nor reworded so as to distort in any way the endorser’s opinion or experience with the product,” §255.1(b), and showing Jarvik as a rower might be out of context. Likewise, §255.2(b) provides that “Advertisements presenting endorsements by what are represented, directly or by implication, to be ‘actual consumers’ should utilize actual consumers, in both the audio and video or clearly and conspicuously disclose that the persons in such advertisements are not actual consumers of the advertised product.” To the extent that consumers are likely to believe that Jarvik’s body double also uses Lipitor, the ad would seem to violate that provision.

On Jarvik’s credentials, independent of his athletic prowess, §255.3(a) states that “Whenever an advertisement represents, directly or by implication, that the endorser is an expert with respect to the endorsement message, then the endorser’s qualifications must in fact give him the expertise that he is represented as possessing with respect to the endorsement.” Indeed, the Lipitor ads may be analogous to §255.3(b)’s Example 1: “An endorsement of a particular automobile by one described as an ‘engineer’ implies that the endorser’s professional training and experience are such that he is well acquainted with the design and performance of automobiles. If the endorser’s field is, for example, chemical engineering, the endorsement would be deceptive."