Segrin Pillai

I'm actually a molecular geneticist, a biochemist, and a board-certified clinical microbiologist.

We did not want the workers to get worried and cause any alarm. So they make a call. You know, we were not able to put on our PPEs and walk into the building simply because that will scare everybody.

There was an image of Osama bin Laden on the front cover.

The thought that came to my mind was, oh boy, we are under attack.

I just jumped into action immediately, started swabbing areas. You focus on the area where the index patient worked. So that's basically his table, his computers, his workbench, and his cubicles, et cetera.

I did not get any sleep at all, so I was working, you know, pretty much 24-7.

So I ended up, you know, heading to the lab and, you know, they were waiting there for me. So I asked them, what's going on? Where's the sample? And when they showed me a box of powdered donuts, I was shocked in the first place. But at the same time, that literally told me how people were handling the situation, how fearful they are, including even law enforcement officers.

They had collected samples from the place that the 9-11 hijackers were residing at. They also collected samples from the vehicles they had rented and used. So all of those samples ended up in my laboratory. I believe it was about 2 a.m. on the 7th of October.

We subjected all of those samples to vigorous testing. And none of the samples that we tested in our laboratory resulted in a positive result.