This New York Times piece reflects on the techniques drug advertisements use to sell their products. Attractive, healthy-looking models playing sick patients will sell drugs; so will wise-looking models playing kindly doctors. Another technique is to ply real doctors with free pens and elegant restaurant meals until they endorse the products of their benefactors.
Pfizer came up with a new technique when they hired Dr. Robert Jarvik; he is neither a practicing physician nor an actor, but he managed to sell medications for two years. This may be why the ads generated such controversy; consumers are used to actors and to real doctors, but not the hybrid neither-of-the-above that Dr. Jarvik represented.
According to the Times, perhaps the message to be learned from the Jarvik episode is it is time to rethink the advertising of prescription drugs. Perhaps it is the time for drug advertising to follow the premise that medication is too serious to be promoted by either doctors or actors who make promises while pocketing checks.