Religious Investors Tell Pfizer:
Honor the Agreement to Get AIDS Drug Rescriptor to Poor

CONTACT: Daniel Rosan, Program Director for Public Health
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
212-870-2317

New York - December 15, 2003 - Faith-based investors today asked pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to reverse its recent announcement that it was pulling out of a licensing deal for Rescriptor (delavirdine), an AIDS drug Pfizer acquired when it purchased Pharmacia. Pharmacia negotiated the agreement prior to its acquisition by Pfizer.

"This agreement, which used the non-profit International Dispensary Association (IDA) to grant licenses for the generic production of Rescriptor (delavirdine), was an opportunity for Pfizer to share resources with non-governmental organizations which are struggling to meet the vast needs of HIV/AIDS patients globally," said Sister Barbara Aires of the Sisters of Charity of New Jersey. "Instead of doing so, Pfizer chose the wrong path. As shareholders and people concerned about the global HIV/AIDS crisis, we are asking them to reconsider."

In a letter to Pfizer CEO Henry A. McKinnell, Sister Aires and other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) wrote: "Instead of opening the door to a new partnership between the pharmaceutical industry and global AIDS activists, Pfizer has reneged on an agreement that marked an important step in the long struggle against AIDS. We are saddened and discouraged that Pfizer has chosen this course."

ICCR members encouraged Pfizer to both return to the original agreement and work with other pharmaceutical companies to develop similar programs for a wide range of medications for HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria. In a January 2003 op-ed in the British medical journal Lancelot, drug company representatives and academics jointly praised the licensing agreement as "promoting access to affordable medicines for the world's poor, while reaffirming patents as indispensable for successful pharmaceutical research."

"This agreement was a win-win for shareholders and AIDS patients worldwide," said Catherine Rowan of the Maryknoll Sisters. "Pfizer CEO McKinnell was supportive of the licensing concept when it was announced last winter. We're not sure why Pfizer walked away. But we hope they come back to the table."
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is a thirty-year-old coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors. ICCR announced last week that both faith-based and secular institutional investors representing over $33 billion in assets were working together in an HIV/AIDS Caucus to increase the pressure on America's leading pharmaceutical companies to widen access to anti-retroviral AIDS drugs in the developing world.

The members of the HIV/AIDS Caucus have already filed shareholder resolutions with anti-retroviral drug producers Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck, and Abbott Laboratories, as well as Pfizer, Schering-Plough, and Eli Lilly.