Becky McClain

Becky McClain is America's first successful biotech whistleblower to prevail in a free speech lawsuit exposing biotechnology safety issues of public concern. In 2010, she won a federal whistleblower case against Pfizer. Her memoir, EXPOSED: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower (published October 2025), tells the gripping true story of her struggles against retaliation for raising safety issues and her fight for survival after exposure to a biohazard while working as an embryonic stem cell scientist at Pfizer's Groton laboratories.

McClain’s book is especially relevant in our post-COVID world. EXPOSED opens wide the laboratory doors for the public. It reveals the hidden culture of biosafety operating within 21st-century biotechnology laboratories and the consequences that laboratory accidents, inadequate oversight, and suppressed safety concerns can have for workers and public health. It is a powerful story of resilience, free speech, worker and public safety that makes a compelling case for stronger protections for scientists and workers who speak out about health and safety risks.

McClain is a molecular biologist with a 23-year career in biotechnology spanning academia and private industry in the United States and abroad. Her research work experience has included developmental biology, molecular genetics, cellular biology, neurobiology, vaccine research and development, and embryonic stem cell technologies. She is an inventor on patents and the author of scientific publications and holds a B.A. in Biology from Indiana University and an M.S. from the University of Texas School of Public Health.

For her advocacy on behalf of worker and public health and safety, McClain received the Callaway Award (2010), the Irving J. Selikoff Award (2011), and the Workplace Hero Award (2011).

McClain continues to advocate for scientists' free speech rights, worker protections, and greater transparency in biotechnology. She believes the public deserves to understand the culture of biosafety in modern laboratories, the risks posed by emerging biotechnologies and laboratory exposures, and the ethical and public health challenges shaping science today. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, Mark.