Pfizer whistle-blower faces isolation

First, his employees stopped reporting to him. Then his supervisors stopped returning his calls and now he does not know whom to report to. His secretary left, he said, and he was moved to an office near Pfizer’s security department at a company building in Peapack, New Jersey.

The latest blow came on Monday, the morning after Rost, 46, appeared on a segment of ‘‘60 Minutes’’ on CBS about drug prices — a follow-up to his news conference on the subject last year with members of Congress and to the opinion pieces he has written for The New York Times and other newspapers. Ready, as always, to put in a full day at the office, Rost turned on his computer on Monday and tried for the first time in almost two weeks to log into his Pfizer e-mail account. Access denied.

Because his corporate cellphone also was suddenly not working, Rost was reduced to using his Hotmail account to send e-mail messages to reporters to report his electronic exile. ‘‘This is like being in some kind of corporate twilight zone,’’ Rost said in an interview on Tuesday. ‘‘I guess everybody’s waiting for me to get fired.’’

Paul Fitzhenry, a Pfizer spokesman, said the company had not deliberately disconnected Rost’s e-mail and cellphone service. ‘‘There have been cases, through a change of vendor, where some employees have lost service for a period of time,’’ Fitzhenry said. Beyond that, Fitzhenry said he could not comment on Rost’s work at Pfizer. — NYT