Pfizer resuming ads for Lipitor after controversy

TRENTON: Television ads for the world's top-selling drug, cholesterol fighter Lipitor, are back, six months after Pfizer Inc pulled them amid charges its use of a celebrity doctor endorser who's never practiced medicine misled the public.

This time, Pfizer is leaving out the celebrity. In the new ads, the endorser is a talent agent from the San Francisco Bay area who tells viewers he started taking Pfizer's Lipitor after surviving a heart attack last year.

The ads began running Tuesday and will be part of an open-ended national campaign that also includes print ads in newspapers and magazines, said John Sage, head of Pfizer's marketing team for Lipitor.

Lipitor generates more than $12 billion a year in revenue for New York-based Pfizer.

Pfizer had run frequent TV ads from late 2006 until then in which artificial heart inventor Dr Robert Jarvik endorsed Lipitor, appearing to be giving medical advice. While he holds a medical degree, Jarvik never completed licensing requirements to practice medicine.

Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, pulled the ads in February as members of Congress were investigating and media outlets were reporting on that conflict and Pfizer's use of a stunt double in an ad that showed Jarvik rowing.

"Although it wasn't clearly our intent, the ads created misimpressions and distractions around what we were trying to do," Sage said late last week.

He said the man in the new ad, John Erlendson, is "a real Lipitor patient, who is very representative of people with" cholesterol problems.