Merck is Focus of Religious Investor Shareholder Resolution
Vote on HIV/AIDS Drug Access

NORTH BRANCH, NJ and NEW YORK, NY///NEWS ADVISORY///Religious shareholders who have filed a resolution urging pharmaceutical giant Merck (NYSE: MRK) to take new steps on the HIV/AIDS crisis will be available for comment leading up to and on the day of the company's annual shareholder meeting on April 27, 2004 in North Branch, New Jersey.

The resolution, filed by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), calls on Merck to "review the economic effects of the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria pandemics on the company's business strategy, and its initiatives to date, and report to shareholders within six months following the 2004 annual meeting." The vote at Merck is one in a series of four such shareholder resolution votes at major pharmaceutical companies, a group that also includes Abbott Labs (NYSE: ABT), Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE).

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Treasurer James Gunning and ICCR Program Director for Public Health Daniel Rosan will be available for comment regarding the upcoming shareholder vote.

Even though HIV medicines can turn AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease, only 4 percent of the estimated 40 million world citizens suffering from HIV/AIDS have access to the life-saving medicines. Of that total, 95 percent of the victims live in the developing world where major pharmaceutical companies have been faulted for not doing enough to make HIV/AIDS medications more readily available to the millions who need them.

Merck will also face ICCR-backed shareholder resolutions on patents, and on the use of shareholder resources for partisan political purposes.

For the full text of the Merck resolution, contact Stephanie Kendall at (703) 276-3254 or skendall@hastingsgroup.com.

With more than 25,000 members and supporters, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is a nonsectarian organization that promotes human rights and social justice worldwide. The committee maintains partnerships in the United States, South and Southeast Asia, Central Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Its programs are based on Unitarian Universalist principles that affirm the worth, dignity and human rights of every person.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility is an association of 275 faith-based institutional investors, including national denominations, religious communities, pension funds, endowments, hospital corporations, economic development funds and publishing companies. ICCR and its members press companies to be socially and environmentally responsible. Each year ICCR-member religious institutional investors sponsor over 100 shareholder resolutions on major social and environmental issues. The combined portfolio value of ICCR's member organizations is estimated to be $110 billion. Visit ICCR on the web at http://www.iccr.org.

CONTACT: Stephanie Kendall, for ICCR, (703) 276-3254 or skendall@hastingsgroup.com.