I am annoyed by all television ads for medical products — you all know that. But those Pfizer ads for Lipitor, the ones featuring the inventor Robert Jarvik, have really gotten my goat recently.

Thankfully, those controversial ads were recently pulled because of numerous misrepresentations about Dr. Jarvik's credentials as a heart expert and whether he's in any position to recommend anything to viewers who may not know any better.

The ad correctly identified Dr. Jarvik as the inventor of an artificial heart that bears his name. But Lipitor is a drug aimed at lowering cholesterol levels — which means that it is used to prevent the very coronary heart disease (CHD) that might someday necessitate getting an artificial heart.

Why didn't Pfizer choose one of the many physicians or scientists who have made major contributions to the prevention of CHD, or whose research proved that Lipitor is effective, or who have shown how the drug works?

I suppose the company chose Dr. Jarvik because he has name recognition and a telegenic smile. Perhaps they thought people would be excited to see and hear a man who invented an artificial heart (which, by the way, has not yet proven to be useful).

Or, Pfizer might have found that the people who made the real progress in preventing CHD were unwilling to shill for its drug, and were much too busy besides.

Pfizer pulled the advertising campaign featuring Jarvik when U.S. Representatives Dingell and Stupak launched an investigation and quickly determined that the ads misrepresented Dr. Jarvik's credentials.

I knew that he had received his M.D. at the University of Utah in 1976, but was unaware of the fact that he neither completed a residency nor was licensed to practice medicine. I also recently learned that the advertisers used a stand-in, or "body double," for Dr. Jarvik during the scene where he appears to be rowing a boat — Dr. Jarvik now admits that he is no rower.

Pfizer is understandably concerned that the sales of Lipitor are being undercut by the availability of cheaper generic statins, as well as potent combinations of statins with other cholesterol-lowering drugs. In addition, the huge returns from the Lipitor cash-cow will dry up when the drug goes off patent in the near future.

Nonetheless, it is disgraceful for a top pharmaceutical company to stoop to such shenanigans to advertise a drug that continues to enjoy more sales throughout the world than any other medication.

From the looks of their new, full-page, print ads for Lipitor that appeared in our local newspaper all this week, Pfizer has obviously not missed a beat in promoting the drug.

At least this newer ad raises a potentially valid point concerning a rival drug named Vytorin, which is a combination of a statin (simvastatin) and a drug (ezetimibe) that prevents the intestine from absorbing cholesterol. The newspaper ad points out that, despite equal cholesterol-lowering effects, a larger dose of a statin like Lipitor may be more effective than the smaller amount of a statin contained in Vytorin because statins have other beneficial effects against atherosclerosis that ezetimibe lacks.

Now if we could only get rid of those omnipresent Merck/Schering Plough television ads for Vytorin, the ones that feature a smiling grandmother-type while correctly and relentlessly telling us that our blood cholesterol levels are determined not only by the amount of cholesterol we ingest every day but also by the genetic makeup we inherited from our grandmother. I have to wonder whether that woman even has any grandchildren.