How much should you keep your client in the loop of what you are posting on behalf of their company?

Based upon your questions, I think that it would be a good idea to talk with the client to see if she wants you writing content that represents her business.

I generally don't delegate that job for my business and the few times that other people have written something for me it always received careful review and heavy editing.

I would.... put the links in the top nav and place adsense at the top position of the left nav.

I understand the content creation problem.  I have graduate degrees and decades of work experience in my topic area.   Content creation still is a laborious undertaking.

In the biotech and medical areas your writer needs a strong background in the content area.  Without that he/she will quickly be spotted as a noob by people who know their stuff.   This is long, careful writing that most people don't want to do.

Anybody who says "yes" or "no" without further clarification is giving you a lazy answer.

Penguin problems can result from links on crap sites or links from great sites.   If you place lots of links with optimized anchor text on a lot of great websites you could still have problems.  Google knows by that artificial anchor text that you are trying to manipulate.

So, it is not only WHERE the links are placed but HOW the links are anchored that is important.

Honestly, the best way to get links is by publishing great content.  If you can do that the links will arrive naturally with zero work from you.   I do almost zero link building.  The anchor text for most of my links is a domain name or a URL or simple words like "here" or "this website" or "this article".

**This gets into the realm of opinion pretty fast **

I like your side attack based upon logic rather than opinion.