In just over a week, we’ll be meeting with Pfizer’s management to discuss its funding of the infamous climate change denialist group, the Heartland Institute.
This meeting is proof that our pressure is working. It’s a major opportunity in our campaign to cut Pfizer’s financial support of Heartland -- which, at an expected $150,000 this year, represents a significant chunk of Heartland’s remaining budget. In advance of that meeting we want to make sure to get Pfizer's attention, so we are going to mobilize the people who most matter to them -- health professionals -- so Pfizer sees that dumping Heartland is in its financial interest.
You can help by spreading the word to the doctors, nurses, public health officials, and other healthcare professionals you know, asking them to sign our open letter calling on Pfizer to drop its funding of Heartland today. Here’s how:
If you're on Facebook, click here to share our letter. TIP: Tag your healthcare professional friends and colleagues in the post to make sure they see it!
If you’re not on Facebook, simply forward this text to your friends and ask them to go to http://sumofus.org/campaigns/heartland-pfizer/
And of course, if you’re a healthcare professional yourself, you can click here to read and sign our letter before passing it along to your friends.
We know how sensitive the pharmaceutical giant is to protecting its professional reputation, that’s why we’re enlisting the help of doctors and medical professionals -- the people who prescribe Pfizer medication on a daily basis -- to sign an open letter telling the company to dump Heartland. The letter -- along with your signatures -- will be presented at the meeting with Pfizer executives.
Even as people are literally dying from increased flooding, drought, freak storms, and other climate impacts around the world, the Heartland Institute continues to deny that climate change exists and attack those working to stop it. Heartland’s bogus “facts” are used by Big Oil to stop the US government from taking any serious action to end its addiction to fossil fuels, which in turn has made it impossible for the world to reach a global climate treaty. Heartland has even gone so far as to put up billboards comparing the men and women working for a better world to terrorists and serial killers.
As a company with a reputation for innovation and a commitment to public health, Pfizer’s staunch support of the climate-denying Heartland Institute is dangerously archaic. Pfizer makes products that aim to improve people’s lives through pharmaceuticals like Lipitor, Advil, Viracept (an AIDS medication), and even the humble Chapstick, while the Heartland Institute obstructs efforts to save our planet. One is not like the other.
We know this won’t be easy. In response to our initial efforts, Pfizer said that it “derive[s] significant benefits” from Heartland, and even censored Facebook wall posts by SumOfUs.org members calling for Pfizer to dump Heartland. That it has agreed to a meeting means we’re getting to Pfizer, and could be on the way to adding it to the list of pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, and Bayer that have already deserted an organization that promotes radical attacks on climate science and scientists.
With our friends at Forecast the Facts, Sierra Club, 350, the League of Conservation Voters, and Greenpeace, we have now mobilized more than 150,000 citizens to call for corporations to pull their support for Heartland -- now it’s time to up the pressure on Pfizer. It’s just what the doctor ordered.
Thanks for all you do,
Paul, Kaytee, Claiborne and the rest of us
SumOfUs is a world-wide movement of people working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. You can follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
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