In order to provide the best possible care to their patients, doctors rely on pharmaceutical companies to provide accurate and balanced information about their medicines and vaccines.

Merck believes the best way to provide this information is to maintain informative, ethical and professional relationships between healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies. Our interactions with healthcare providers, other customers and consumers are governed by laws and regulations, and our longstanding global code of ethical conduct and guidance. We enforce these through our global business practices and compliance program.

We recognize that both our reputation for integrity and the trust our stakeholders place in us are dependent on our ethical practices. For this reason, we want to make certain that the ways in which we market and sell our products to healthcare professionals, health insurers and governments provide accurate, balanced and useful information to enable prescribers to make the best decisions for their patients. We believe that our adherence to the highest ethical sales and marketing standards will ensure that scientific information is the predominant factor in prescribing decisions. This will help to reinforce our reputation for providing high-quality products and for significant contributions to improving public health.

Merck markets our medicines and vaccines to healthcare professionals, providers, insurers and governments. Our professional sales representatives and other employees inform these customers about our medicines and vaccines and their appropriate use. In some countries, where permitted by law, we also inform patients and other consumers directly about diseases and available treatments that they may wish to discuss with their doctor.

We believe that our marketing, sales and advertising activities make an important contribution to medicine by informing our customers of treatment options based on the most current scientific information and findings from rigorous clinical studies. We take our responsibilities related to this seriously and evaluate our marketing, sales and advertising activities on an ongoing basis to ensure they are consistent with laws and regulations and with Merck policies and values.