Your Mutual Fund Could Save Lives

Your retirement funds may do more than offer financial security. They might save lives. With the help of a new website, they can be a tool to prevent children dying from pneumonia. At least, that is what Doctors Without Borders is hoping.

This week, the humanitarian nonprofit, which provides emergency medical care during armed conflicts and other crises worldwide, opened an online tool for finding out whether a given investment package includes shares in Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). These pharmaceutical companies make the only pneumonia vaccines for children, and, the nonprofit says, they are unaffordable for many people living in countries with high rates of this potentially fatal illness.

“These people have money invested with Pfizer or GSK and can actually hold the companies accountable,” says Brienne Prusak, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders (known outside the U.S. as Médecins Sans Frontières).