This post is part of a series on celebrity spokespeople who ended up doing serious harm to the brands they were hired to promote, or vice versa. See how we rank the 20 top spokesperson fiascos.

Remember the early part of 2008? Britney Spears was nuts. The economy was not in the toilet as much and commercials for Pfizer's (NYSE:PFE) anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor blanketed the nation's broadcast and cable airwaves. Good times.

Those Lipitor commercials -- in case you have forgotten -- featured medical scientist Dr. Robert Jarvik Jarvick speaking about the heart disease that killed his father and urging the public to ask their doctor about the pill. Jarvick, Jarvik, the "inventor" of the artificial heart, looked healthy and vigorous as he rowed on a sunny lake. As the New York Times pointed out, the ad was a pack of lies.
Jarvick Jarvik is a medical doctor who is not licensed to practice medicine and who may have exaggerated his role in developing the artificial heart. Plus, he does not even row. Talk about truth in advertising. After members of Congress balked, Pfizer pulled the campaign that reportedly cost it $256 million. Pfizer is going to have to figure another way to bolster sales of Lipitor before it comes off patent in 2010. Maybe James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini can be persuaded to urge people to "whack" their cholesterol. Just a suggestion.

The sad thing is that Jarvik Jarvick is not the sleaziest pitchman in the drug industry. Those would be the celebrities who go on TV to "raise awareness" about a disease. Drug companies often pay them too. It's hardly surprising the U.S. is the only country to allow drug companies to sell directly to consumers. Whatever benefits these ads create are outweighed by the problems they cause.

Read the entire series

Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK), like its pharmaceutical competitors, has seen better days. A raft of patent protection expirations, bad PR, concerns over health risks for many of its drugs, and a lack of pipeline products, have all combined to stomp on one of the largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. Is the future brighter? Possibly, but there's a lot of risk to go with it.

Merck says that it will continue to develop experimental drugs for cholesterol and obesity [subscription required]. Nothing new there, as those two health conditions are increasing in numbers in the U.S. (obesity in particular). But Merck will be developing new drugs in these areas where the competition has miserably failed in the recent past due to safety problems.

What can Merck do to ensure its efforts to not meet the same fate? That is a question without a clear answer, although stakeholders long in MRK shares should be asking that question right now. It doesn't have the best track record, with the Vioxx lawsuit mess and strong competition for one of its most popular blockbuster drugs, the Zocor cholesterol product.

Merck, embracing some recent science, believes that raising good cholesterol could reduce the risk of heart problems beyond what can be accomplished by existing statin drugs (and let's hope they are right). Statin drugs work by lowering bad cholesterol, and although the approach works for many, it's not the best route according to many medical experts.

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) won an important suit to preserve its patent benefits for Lipitor, a popular and lucrative cholesterol-lowering drug. According to Peter Loftus (www.wsj.com - subscription required), Pfizer earned almost $13 billion from Lipitor sales in 2006. Indian drug maker Ranbaxy Laboratories had sued to sell a cheaper generic version of Lipitor. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Pfizer.

Pfizer agreed to pay a $35 million fine in order to settle a suit brought by the US Justice Department involving a drug sold by Pharmacia, now a Pfizer subsidiary. Prior to its acquisition by Pfizer in 2003, Pharmacia marketed a human growth hormone drug called Genetropin. There is nothing wrong with the drug. The fine is because Pharmacia improperly influenced a vendor for government health-care programs to purchase not only Genotropin but other Pharmacia products as well. Pfizer will still market Genotropin, but the guilty unit of Pharmacia will pay $20 million in fines and will not be able to participate in government health-care programs. Another Pharmacia unit will pay $15 million in fines for improperly promoting Genotropin as an anti-aging medication, an unapproved usage.

News of Pfizer's legal dealings did not seem to bother investors. Pfizer closed at $25.67 on April 3, up 33 cents for the day.