I certainly agree that the message Dr. Jarvik is touting is right. In addition, as someone who has developed and produced pharmaceutical marketing campaigns, I am a supporter of them.

The point of my post was not to kill the messenger. After all, I touted his accomplishments. However, what I did not agree with was the fact that it was implied that Dr. Jarvik is a medical doctor. When I saw the commercials, I thought they were good because I believed he was a physician talking about his experience prescribing the medication. While he may be qualified to discuss it, the fact the advertisement was not clear about his background is a problem.

After reading the comments on Jarvik and the Libitor ad, I asked Alfred Tector, who was the transplant surgeon at Aurora Health Care who worked with Jarvik on some of the earliest trials with the Jarvik heart, what his take was. He shared some interesting thoughts.

“Rob Jarvik is a very interesting guy. He is primarily an engineer and when he was developing the total artificial heart (which is the device we implanted into Ray Harmon) he attended medical school at University of Utah in Salt Lake City where the lab site was located. He did obtain his degree in medicine but he never did a internship or any other formal training however, he had extensive on the job training when he transitioned the total artificial heart from the animal laboratory to implantation and usage in humans and had a fantastic knowledge of cardiology and physiology of the heart.

During the transition years he advertised underwear in many of the popular magazines in an attempt to keep the company afloat although he didn’t row the boat he did wear the underwear. Soon after he sold the company (Symbion) to the University of Arizona. Later he developed the Jarvik axial flow pump which has had very good success particularly in England. When we were developing or program at Aurora St. Luke’s in 1985 and 1986 he gave a talk on the total artificial heart and it was the largest crowd ever assembled for an event at St. Luke’s. Not only was the auditorium overcrowded to capacity but his talk was televised for the overflow in many of the other conference rooms.”`

I would hope we would be encouraging more innovators like Jarvik, not belittling them. He is certainly well qualified to discuss heart disease and the message of exercise, cholesterol and blood pressure control is giving us great improvements in reducing heart disease in this country.

G Edwin Howe
http://healthcare-action.blogspot.com/