Prosecutor: Wisconsin pharmacists thought vaccines weren’t safe

According to court documents, a Wisconsin pharmacist told police that he tried to ruin hundreds of coronavirus vaccines because he believed that Shot would mutate people’s DNA.

Madison, Wisconsin-Pharmacists in Wisconsin were convinced that the world was “collapsed” and believed that shots would mutate people’s DNA, according to a court document released Monday, for hundreds of times. He told police that he tried to destroy the coronavirus vaccine.

Grafton police, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Milwaukee, arrested Aurora Health pharmacist Stephen Brandenburg last week after investigating 57 spoiled vials of Modena vaccine. Fees are pending.

“He formed this belief that they weren’t safe,” Adam Jerol, a lawyer in the Ozaukee County district, said at a virtual hearing. He added that he was upset because Brandenburg was divorcing his wife, and Aurora employees said Brandenburg worked twice with a gun.

The detective is believed to have told investigators that 46-year-old Brandenburg was admitted as a conspiracy theorist and intentionally tried to ruin the vaccine because altering DNA could hurt people. Written in a statement.

False information about the COVID-19 vaccine is skyrocketing online, and false claims are widespread about everything from the components of the vaccine to its possible side effects.

One of the early false claims suggested that vaccines could alter DNA. Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines, as well as Moderna vaccines, rely on messenger RNA or mRNA. This is a fairly new technology used in vaccines that experts have been working on for many years. MRNA vaccines help train the immune system to identify peaplomers on the surface of the coronavirus and provoke an immune response. Experts say the claim that vaccines can genetically modify humans is untrue.

Jeff Barr, Chief Medical Group Officer at Aurora Healthcare, said Brandenburg deliberately removed the vial from refrigeration overnight at the Grafton Medical Center from December 24 to 25, returned it, and returned it on December night. He said he admitted that he had left it. .. 25 on Saturday.

A pharmacy technician found the vial outside the refrigerator on December 26th. Brandenburg initially stated that he had removed the vial to access other items in the refrigerator and that he had not accidentally replaced it. The Moderna vaccine is effective outside the refrigerator for 12 hours, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people and discard the rest. Police said the discarded dose was worth between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.

Barr said the doses people received on December 26 were of little use. However, Gerol said in a hearing that the vials were actually held and Moderna needed to test the dose to make sure it was ineffective before filing a complaint.

Brandenburg’s attorney Jason Baltz did not talk about the benefits of the proceeding during the proceedings. Gerol postponed the charges, saying he still needed to determine if Brandenburg actually destroyed the dose.

Judge Paul Malloy ordered Brandenburg to hold a $ 10,000 signature bond, provided it let go of the firearms, did not engage in medical care, and did not contact Aurora employees.

Brandenburg is in the process of divorcing his wife for eight years. The couple has two small children.

According to his wife’s affidavit on December 30, the same day Brandenburg was arrested for tampering with the vaccine, he stopped by her house on December 6, with a water purifier and two 30-day food. I took it down. That the world was “collapsed” and she denied. He said the government was planning a cyberattack and would shut down the power grid.

She added that he kept food in a rental unit with a gun and no longer felt safe around him. The Chief Justice of the Court on Monday discovered that the children of Brandenburg were in imminent danger and temporarily banned them from being with him.

Online court records show that Brandenburg’s divorce lawyer withdrew from the proceedings on December 28.

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Minneapolis Associated Press writer Douggrass contributed to this report.