NYT Wrong to Cite McClain Case in OSHA-Biosafety Story

While the NYT may have a story in the charge that OSHA isn't in lockstep with biotech safety, throwing up ex-Pfizer scientist Becky McClain as an example is simply irresponsible. By all reports, McClain was diagnosed with hypokalemic periodic paralysis, a genetically determined illness—which she, nevertheless, dubiously claimed was caused by a lentivirus from a Pfizer laboratory. (For background on this story, go here.)

Tossing McClain's case into the OSHA-biosafety mix also does a disservice to those very few scientists who probably did acquire disease in the workplace, like...

• Ru-ching Hsia, a Department of Agriculture scientist who developed coma-inducing hemolytic uremic syndrome after becoming infected in 2003 with laboratory-derived E. coli O157:H7;
• Jeannette Adu-Bobie, who contracted meningococcal septicemia in 2005 while working in a New Zealand vaccine laboratory; and
• Malcolm Casadaban, a U of C researcher who died September 13, 2009, of infection caused by a weakened version of Yersinia pestis.

According to Wikipedia, "[t]he last known case of a scientist dying from a pathogen he was studying was Howard Taylor Ricketts, who died of typhus in 1910."*

* The Rickettsiaceae guy!

OSHA = Occupational Safety Health Administration (which reportedly denied McClain's claim).