In an interview with The Defender, molecular biologist Becky McClain discussed her new book, ‘Exposed: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower’.
The book exposes dangerous safety lapses and corporate coverups in Pfizer’s biosafety labs, and McClain’s decade-long fight for medical records and legal justice after she was infected with a genetically modified lentivirus.
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Whistle-blower Biologist Says Pfizer Covered Up Her Exposure to Engineered Virus, Threatened Family
By Brenda Baletti, PhD, as published by The Defender on 7 November 2025
Molecular biologist Becky McClain began raising safety concerns in 2000, soon after she started working in Pfizer’s Biosafety Level 2 lab in Connecticut.
Three years later, after management failed to address the issues, McClain was exposed to a genetically modified lentivirus, engineered using gain-of-function technologies that made the virus more infectious and more pathogenic.
The exposure left her disabled, with symptoms including numbness, periodic paralysis, pain and other neurological problems. Doctors couldn’t diagnose or effectively treat her condition because Pfizer refused to disclose what she had been exposed to, citing “trade secrets.”
The incident launched McClain into a decade-long fight to understand her illness and obtain her exposure records so she could seek proper treatment. During her battle, she became a whistle-blower, standing up to Pfizer’s threats against her and her family.
In her new book from Skyhorse Publishing, ‘Exposed: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower’, McClain recounts how she raised workplace safety concerns, suffered exposure to a dangerous virus, fought Pfizer for years in court and resisted the company’s repeated attempts to silence her – ultimately winning a legal victory.
McClain refused to sign a gag order – even after Pfizer fired her, harassed her and threatened her – making her one of the few people who can share her story publicly.
In her book, McClain exposes corruption she says runs not just through Pfizer, but across the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies meant to hold it accountable – from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) and US Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to the federal courts.
Consumer safety advocate Ralph Nader wrote in his foreword to the book:
“No general description of this book can convey the horror and details of what Becky McClain and her husband, Mark, endured at the hands of Pfizer, enabled over the years by collusion with government officials. Pre-verdict and post-verdict, this company employed thuggish retaliatory tactics, blacklisting, threats, harassments, wrongful discharges, coverups and demands for total gag orders.
“Those tactics were designed to keep her case from flaring into a national demand for Congressional regulation in the form of rigorous biolab inspections and mandatory safety/health standards with teeth. Against this objective, Pfizer and the bioengineering industry are succeeding.”
“If you document biosafety issues and or speak out about them, you’re out”
In an interview with The Defender, McClain said she noticed safety issues as soon as she started working in the lab.
“We had no break room, no safe break room. We had unsafe offices. We had improper biocontainment protocols using infectious agents,” she said. “And although the lab was unsafe, management made it worse by instilling a culture of fear for anyone who dared to raise safety issues.”
McClain said most scientists at the lab shared her concerns, but managers made it clear: “If you document biosafety issues and or speak out about them, you’re out.”
Scientists at the lab worked on genomic-altering biotechnologies, creating viruses capable of entering cells and changing their genomes, she said.
After multiple safety incidents – including one that left several scientists sick – McClain walked in one morning to find “a mess” on her personal workbench. A supervisor and an untrained scientist had left a dangerous experiment there overnight, without McClain’s knowledge.
A month later, the untrained scientist asked McClain if she knew anything about lentiviruses, a family of viruses that includes HIV and FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus).
By then, McClain was experiencing numbness on one side of her face, which a neurologist suggested might be the start of multiple sclerosis.
McClain realised she had likely been exposed to a modified lentivirus and asked the scientist to find out more about its safety. He returned “a little bit nervous” and told her the virus he had used on her bench was safe, indicating it wasn’t infectious to humans.
That conversation marked the beginning of McClain’s fight to obtain her exposure records. Pfizer refused to provide them, telling her that “trade secrets supersede your right to that information.”
As her condition worsened, McClain went on medical leave – and the company terminated her.
McClain was shocked because she had assumed worker rights would protect her. She said:
“I couldn’t get directed medical care for my illness, which was a mystery illness because these genetically engineered virus technologies were designed to cause new emerging diseases for use in laboratory research studies.
“So, when I visited doctors, no one knew what was happening. They were all fearful and unable to explain my illness.
“My husband and I feared I was going to die. It eventually became very, very, very, very severe. It began with numbness on the left side of my face, then extreme left jaw pain, inflammation of my trigeminal nerve, headaches, spinal pain, then periodic paralysis.”
“There’s no free speech for scientists”
McClain turned to OSHA for help, submitting documentation she had gathered that exposed egregious safety violations in the lab. OSHA refused to help her access her exposure records and didn’t even conduct a safety inspection of the lab.
“OSHA is a captured agency now,” McClain said. “They oversee approximately 24 different whistle-blower laws under one roof, making it easy for the industry to control OSHA. It’s easy to capture. Place a corporate head to oversee OSHA, and you gain control of all the whistle-blower laws and investigations.”
After OSHA declined to provide substantive help, McClain’s next step was clear. “The only legal remedy to get my exposure records was to file a civil whistle-blower claim,” she said.
During the process, McClain met countless other scientists in similar situations.
“There’s no free speech for scientists,” she said. She cited examples of scientists being censored and smeared as “anti-vaxxers” during the covid-19 pandemic, when “they were merely raising legitimate safety concerns.”
A recent investigation by The Defender found that OSHA told healthcare employers not to report employees’ adverse reactions to covid-19 vaccines – but to continue reporting injuries caused by all other vaccines.
Pfizer launched “backdoor retaliation” by targeting McClain’s husband
Throughout her long legal battle, Pfizer tried relentlessly to compel her to sign a gag order. She refused, knowing that signing would cost her the leverage she needed to access information about her exposure.
The company launched what McClain called “backdoor retaliation” by targeting her husband, who worked at the FDA in Connecticut.
“Two months before the trial, my husband was called into his office and told that if he didn’t make me settle with Pfizer, he’d be out of a job,” McClain said.
The threat terrified the couple, as McClain was extremely sick and they relied entirely on his income. “I thought Pfizer couldn’t have that kind of reach … my husband works for the government. But they did,” she said.
Her husband refused to force her to sign a gag order. After facing false accusations despite a spotless 18-year record as a commissioned officer, he left the FDA.
McClain eventually won her free speech whistle-blower lawsuit in a 2010 jury trial, even though later revelations showed that the judge had financial conflicts of interest. She received 10 years of back pay – but no compensation for her exposure, illness or suffering.
Pfizer faced no obligation to remediate its safety programme.
Although McClain never gained full access to her exposure records, she did obtain additional details about the virus, which she explains in her book.
Today, she publicly advocates for industry reform. She told The Defender there are several key issues she thinks need to be addressed. She said:
“First, is that all gag orders related to lab injuries and public health and safety concerns should be illegal. The public has a right to know about the dangers in these laboratories, especially in our post-pandemic environment.
“Then, OSHA needs to be revamped. It’s a captured agency.”
McClain added that OSHA can’t effectively oversee biotechnology because the agency doesn’t fully understand the serious and unique safety risks. She said the safety problems run through biotechnology research in academia, government and the private sector – each with its own set of regulations – and that the private sector faces the fewest rules.
“The bottom line is that we need better free speech and whistle-blower protections for scientists, physicians, and injured workers,” McClain said. “No one should go through 10 years of hell just to have a safe workplace or to protect the public by standing up for professional standards.”
This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Related articles in The Defender:
- Exclusive: OSHA Admits It Told Healthcare Employers Not to Report Covid Vaccine Injuries
- Whistle-blower Will Appeal After Federal Court Dismisses Lawsuit Alleging Fraud in Pfizer Covid Vaccine Trials
- Whistle-blower: FDA Failed to Address ‘Biohazard Nightmare’ at Merck Vaccine Plant
- Fauci’s Replacement at NIAID a Cheerleader for Gain-of-Function Research
- Harvard Fires Professor Who Co-wrote Great Barrington Declaration
About the Author
Brenda Baletti, PhD, is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a PhD in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Categories: Breaking News, US News
What we really need is for scientists to stop working in that field.It does no good for anyone, It is only a way for evil corporations to exploit people into making them nore sick which equates to more income for the business by making a larger need for more so called medicines and vaccines. It is also an open door to making other biological weapons
What I find funny about this article and THAT biologist Becky McClain author a book and discussed it openly is… why she is still alive after EXPOSING them are uncanny new soap-opera episodes of “Play victim” for sympathy after screwed-up badly.
Involved directly in engineered a virus, paid to do so and collaborate faithfully with Pfizer in research. Now seeking for attention..?? Why? Why are you still alive Becky..? Psozer surely won’t allowed any leaks in their research secrets but you…. still alive…. Weird..!?