Speaker 1: Hmm, what committing illegal surgery my nightmare obstetricians? How is that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I was definitely an improvement over Tuesday's intro,
Speaker 1: which was, well, that was pretty good. I thought. I
Speaker 1: thought that got a lot of a lot of emotion out.
Speaker 1: I got a hype on that intro for sure, Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Courtney Kossak returning for part two of the story
Speaker 1: of Dr James Burt, the man who decided he could
Speaker 1: to vaginas better. So happy to be back in honor
Speaker 1: of this wonderful man, this this hero. Um, how are you?
Speaker 1: How you? How you how you doing? As we roll
Speaker 1: into part two, Courtney, UM, I feel I'm just clutching
Speaker 1: my vagina tightly, just trying to keep it, trying to
Speaker 1: keep it as God intended or whatever that means. You
Speaker 1: gotta clutch it tightly because he's still out there. So
Speaker 1: where right, just lurking around Florida retirement communities? Oh god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be some retirement communities that they're going to
Speaker 1: have some dark stories in a little bit. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he sucks, And we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about one of the more unsettling books I've ever heard of,
Speaker 1: so when we last left our hero seems like the
Speaker 1: wrong word. Dr James Burt and his fourth wife Joan.
Speaker 1: They had co authored a book called Surgery of Love.
Speaker 1: It was aimed at creating popular demand for his love Surgery.
Speaker 1: I have attempted to find a copy of this book,
Speaker 1: but as of yet I have been unable to do so. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: significant details about it exists, both thanks to the book
Speaker 1: The Love Surgeon and from a story and the Archives
Speaker 1: of Sexual Behavior, also written by Sarah Rodriguez, who I
Speaker 1: assume must have acquired a copy herself. The information I
Speaker 1: found on this book makes me think that it must
Speaker 1: be among the most offensively misogynist things ever written. It
Speaker 1: is a fascinating mix of paternalistic chauvinism and creepily sex
Speaker 1: positive pseudoscience. Chapter titles include graced for impact here after
Speaker 1: titals include Okay, this one's gonna hurt. All right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a sip of zevia here that soothes the horror. Okay,
Speaker 1: tighter Titus, That would have been an improvement. Courtney. Um oh, no,
Speaker 1: I read ahead. It's bad. Yeah, here's the first title
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read. There is no foreplay in ecstasy of
Speaker 1: living and loving Colon only orgasmic loving. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what The next chapter, optimal sexual Functioning is sexual
Speaker 1: ecstasy beyond the wildest imagination of most people come up
Speaker 1: but within reach of all exclamation point a lot of
Speaker 1: random capitalizing in here, too. Love is most people have
Speaker 1: been living it with their mates, will ultimately destroy their
Speaker 1: sexual ecstasy. Oh my god, and my personal favorite, how
Speaker 1: any man can make his woman into a seething, massive,
Speaker 1: perpetual passion for himself, simm colin your own private sex
Speaker 1: pot in your own private world. Shut up, Robert, that's
Speaker 1: a chapter, Your own private sex pot in your own
Speaker 1: private world. That's he should be canceled today, retroactively, he
Speaker 1: should be. That's the that's the goal of this cancel
Speaker 1: culture has finally come from the for for the love Surgeon.
Speaker 1: It's bad, and there's a lot that's in that last chapter.
Speaker 1: In particular, I think it really highlights the thing that's
Speaker 1: never admitted. But his key to all this, which is jealousy,
Speaker 1: and not just even jealousy that your wife might be cheating,
Speaker 1: but that there might be other men who are a
Speaker 1: better lover than you. That's what this is about right,
Speaker 1: is like being able to feel like you're some porn
Speaker 1: star dynamo um and surgically altering the body of your
Speaker 1: partner in order to do that, because learning things is
Speaker 1: for is for cooks. It's it's great. Did he ever
Speaker 1: state that I would no, no, this you gotta read
Speaker 1: in between, but like you don't title a chapter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's bad. Yeah, your own private sex spot in your
Speaker 1: own like the fact that like your own private world, right,
Speaker 1: a world where there are no other men, where there's
Speaker 1: no possibility of her taking another lover. She's so obsessed
Speaker 1: with you and your dick. Um, That's that's what he's
Speaker 1: saying there. You know, these are profoundly insecure, man, you
Speaker 1: would have to be to do this. The book opens
Speaker 1: with a biography of the authors, who write that they
Speaker 1: quote manage the children still at home, two small boys
Speaker 1: and their homes and Dayton and Veil. Their lives are
Speaker 1: totally dedicated to each other, with their hobbies of travel
Speaker 1: and skiing and writing secondary to just always being together
Speaker 1: and pleasuring each other. Now, obviously James is prior marriages
Speaker 1: and the allegations of a US against him are left out.
Speaker 1: As you might get guess from that last line I quoted,
Speaker 1: the whole book frames marriage is being first and foremost
Speaker 1: about constantly fucking each other. Dr Birt is very clear
Speaker 1: that he believes the key to a happy marriage is twofold,
Speaker 1: incessant boning and a woman who is totally submissive to
Speaker 1: her husband. In the book, he attacks what he calls
Speaker 1: the quote current definition of love is defined by the
Speaker 1: daily living habits of most people. The healthy variant of
Speaker 1: this would be to recognize that the burdens of life
Speaker 1: and modern society and raising children often cause couples to
Speaker 1: lose sight of the joys of physical intimacy, and it
Speaker 1: can be good to be reminded of that, right, That's
Speaker 1: the healthy version of what he's saying. What he's saying
Speaker 1: is that having lives outside of constantly sexually pleasuring each
Speaker 1: other is a distraction from the only thing that makes
Speaker 1: marriage worthwhile right and potentially a threat. Yeah, and a threat. Potentially,
Speaker 1: anything that's not fucking um is a threat to the
Speaker 1: only reason you would want to be with a person.
Speaker 1: It's a very shallow view of intimacy. Now, it takes
Speaker 1: a lot for me to say this book is too
Speaker 1: pro sex, but this book is certainly too pro a
Speaker 1: very specific and unhealthy kind of sex, and Dr Bert's view,
Speaker 1: sex is the only thing that matters in a healthy relationship.
Speaker 1: He urges couples to quote disregard previous definitions of the
Speaker 1: word love in order to concentrate on what he calls
Speaker 1: the ecstasy of living and loving. Bert advises the couples
Speaker 1: reading his book to take absolutely every opportunity to touch
Speaker 1: and fondle each other. He provides the example that if
Speaker 1: a woman is cooking bacon in the morning, her husband
Speaker 1: should go through her clothing to manipulate her clitterest until
Speaker 1: she orgasms. The love surgery, he notes, will make this
Speaker 1: breakfast fondling easier, as a circumcised clitterest would allow for
Speaker 1: the woman to climax in a matter of seconds. This
Speaker 1: makes it clear that again, the purpose of his surgery
Speaker 1: is less about a woman's pleasure and more about making
Speaker 1: it easier for the man to feel like a sex god.
Speaker 1: He bragged that after surgery, a husband would be able
Speaker 1: to bring his wife to orgasm with quote a blink
Speaker 1: or two of his eyelashes. Oh my god, I'm just
Speaker 1: in a perpetual cringe. It's it's very good Um, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah. Bert goes on to write that every aspect
Speaker 1: of daily living ought to be focused entirely around love
Speaker 1: and physical loving. His surgery then, was so necessary because
Speaker 1: biology got in the way of a couple fucking the
Speaker 1: way and with the frequency that doctor James Burt wanted
Speaker 1: personally to fuck. According to The New York Times, Bert's
Speaker 1: book included this real banger of a line quote, women
Speaker 1: are structurally inadequate for intercourse. This is a pathological condition
Speaker 1: amenable to surgery. Oh my god, structurally inadequate. Did he
Speaker 1: ever take a second to think it might be him? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is not a man who spent one solitary second
Speaker 1: of his life analyzing his own behavior. Also, do you
Speaker 1: love how he just straight up redefined the word love.
Speaker 1: He's like, actually, I've got some notes on love as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Love is actually all this stuff about like partnering and
Speaker 1: like you know, potentially like raising human beings or even
Speaker 1: just like taking on the burdens and difficulties of life together.
Speaker 1: It's just boning. It's just constant, constant banging. That's all
Speaker 1: that it is. Yeah, it's very again, a very sad
Speaker 1: view of and it's you know, this guy is raised
Speaker 1: in a repressive sexual culture. You can see some of
Speaker 1: what he's doing is kind of like a reaction to
Speaker 1: the sex negative attitudes that he would have been raised with,
Speaker 1: but he takes it in like an equally unhealthy opposite direction.
Speaker 1: It's great. Yep. Burtas shares his readers in the book
Speaker 1: that love surgery will turn any woman into a quote
Speaker 1: horny little mouse. Love surgery was the magic key to
Speaker 1: quote fixed women, both from the inherent deficiency of their
Speaker 1: biology and from the strains of childbirth. He wrote that
Speaker 1: having children made many women large enough to drive a
Speaker 1: truck through sideways. As I already noted, he described their
Speaker 1: vaginas as real clappers, by which he meant he had enough,
Speaker 1: by which he meant he had enough room to clap
Speaker 1: his hands in their vagina. Oh my, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Mary and Joseph, what the fuck guy? You should have
Speaker 1: gotten his medical lice and just taken away for that comment. Yeah. That.
Speaker 1: I often think if we could replace our federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies with just a group of men and women
Speaker 1: in suits who find people who are who say really
Speaker 1: shitty things and just just walk up to them. A couple,
Speaker 1: couple of couple of people in suits with briefcases walk
Speaker 1: up to him like, are you such and such yeah,
Speaker 1: and then just hit him right in the face in public.
Speaker 1: That would be the comment that that would yeah, just
Speaker 1: just a just a g man hitting him in the
Speaker 1: jaw in the middle of a Denny's would have been
Speaker 1: the right response to writing that you don't even yeah,
Speaker 1: you can just oh my god, it hurts. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's awful, it's a nightmare. Doctor Burt's version of intimacy
Speaker 1: gives absolutely no time or consideration to the ability of
Speaker 1: women to give themselves orgasm. He does not consider climaxing
Speaker 1: to be a thing that couples work towards together either. Instead,
Speaker 1: he seems to view orgasm as something a man gives
Speaker 1: a woman. Bert wrote that men quote with their superior
Speaker 1: physical strength should lovingly physically force their wives to have
Speaker 1: multiple orgasms until she quote just can't stand it. If
Speaker 1: she should demand that he stop and say that she's
Speaker 1: had enough, Doctor Burt advises using physical strength to quote
Speaker 1: force her to submit for quote further and further and
Speaker 1: further orgasms. Dr Burt goes on to write that the
Speaker 1: only difference between rape and rapture was salesmanship. Oh my
Speaker 1: fucking god, somewhat. His first wife should have just taken
Speaker 1: that straight to the courthouse. Yeah, rapists just aren't good salesman.
Speaker 1: It's so horrible, a nightmare. I don't even have a joke. No, no,
Speaker 1: what what can you say about that line? How can
Speaker 1: you write that line without bursting into flames? It's amazing?
Speaker 1: Great copyrighting though, great. Thank yeah, Look, the man was
Speaker 1: a literary titan. The misogyny dripping from this book is
Speaker 1: particularly clear when Dr Burt writes about his fourth wife,
Speaker 1: Joan from the Love Surgeon quote. Although Joan Burt was,
Speaker 1: according to the author Biographies and the Flap of Surgery
Speaker 1: of Love, and accomplished actress and musician, and a sought
Speaker 1: after professional and real estate with great artistic abilities. In
Speaker 1: James Burt to view, a wife must give exclusive attention
Speaker 1: in her private life to her husband in every and
Speaker 1: all ways, and focus attention on his once needs, goals,
Speaker 1: and face her children in the world at large. Is
Speaker 1: a member of a loving couple, not as an individual.
Speaker 1: A good wife, according to Bert, will never, at any time,
Speaker 1: in any way in public or private, be critical or
Speaker 1: demanding of her husband. Bert's emphasis if the husband wanted
Speaker 1: his wife to gain or lose weight, dress a certain way,
Speaker 1: or wear makeup, she should do so. Bert believed in
Speaker 1: both their social and sexual roles, women were to be supine.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would never have got I don't know.
Speaker 1: How are you supposed to get married in this day
Speaker 1: and age? Uh? You mean back when Bert's writing it? Yes. Oh,
Speaker 1: if a man decides he's interested in you, you just
Speaker 1: do whatever he says. Look, that's the beauty of Dr
Speaker 1: Birt's but you don't have a choice. It's fine as
Speaker 1: long as he's a good salesman. Uh, real piece of shit. Ye.
Speaker 1: On the up side, there's no upside. Yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1: where you're going with that, buddy? Is he still performing surgery? Oh? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. You think he's gonna stop once he
Speaker 1: publishes his book? Though this is the book is trying
Speaker 1: to get more people to take it. He's decided to
Speaker 1: go public with it. Right, he's an announcing that he's
Speaker 1: doing his surgery. Dr Burt decided that this book, which
Speaker 1: he hoped would help his love surgery be taken seriously
Speaker 1: by the medical community, was a good place to brag
Speaker 1: about how good he was at fucking his wife. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from medical bag here. The book even
Speaker 1: bragged that his wife was one of the doctor's most
Speaker 1: successful patients and that quote. Joan has climax and elevators
Speaker 1: from the same path Southampton, Princess in Bermuda to the
Speaker 1: Kualima in Hawaii, more than many women do in their
Speaker 1: entire lives. Basically, she she orgasms more on like cruise
Speaker 1: ship elevators than most women ever do in their whole
Speaker 1: lives because I'm sucking her in the elevators of all
Speaker 1: these cruise ships. Oh, I fucking got and she got
Speaker 1: the clip surgery. Yeah, yeah, he did. He did all
Speaker 1: the stuff to her. Joan Burt also commented that her
Speaker 1: husband had finally, for the first time, given women quote
Speaker 1: the opportunity to enjoy sex. Oh my god, beautiful brainwashing
Speaker 1: some ancient Roman ladies. I might introduce him to. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1: According to The New York Times, Dr Burt also used
Speaker 1: his book as a place to admit to the world
Speaker 1: that he had been committing love surgery for years without
Speaker 1: the consent of his patients. Quote in the book, Dr
Speaker 1: Burt admitted to performing reconstructive surgery on many hundreds of
Speaker 1: women without their consent, usually after the birth of a child.
Speaker 1: The patient, he wrote, had not been informed that anything
Speaker 1: more had been done to her than delivery and epsiotomy repair,
Speaker 1: or yes, you had stitches with your delivery. This is
Speaker 1: in fact outrageous, but it didn't seem that way to
Speaker 1: an awful lot of people at the time. And this
Speaker 1: is because the Nine Teams seventies was the era in
Speaker 1: which informed consent in the medical context did not quite
Speaker 1: mean what it does now. The existence of informed consent
Speaker 1: as a legal term and a required precursor for receiving
Speaker 1: a medical procedure only dates back to nineteen seventy one
Speaker 1: and has only been official in a meaningful way since
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three. Even then it did not and again
Speaker 1: people started talking about this. There were doctors in like
Speaker 1: the late fifties talking about the fact that we need
Speaker 1: to be getting informed consent, but it's not really mandated
Speaker 1: until the early seventies, and even then they're using the
Speaker 1: term conformed consent. You and I would not call what
Speaker 1: most doctors were getting in that period informed consent. The
Speaker 1: idea like now, when you say, like you need informed
Speaker 1: consent to a procedure. It means patients or at least
Speaker 1: the patients you know, representative in the case of like
Speaker 1: a medical power of attorney, should have full comprehension of
Speaker 1: the risks and consequences of a procedure before they can
Speaker 1: be consented to have considered to have consented to it. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't just tell someone what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: You have to tell them what could go wrong, you know, like,
Speaker 1: otherwise you're not really consenting. Early medical consent laws did
Speaker 1: not do a good job and of ensuring the full
Speaker 1: comprehension part. They were a huge step forward because now
Speaker 1: surges and doctors had to at least get an okay
Speaker 1: before agreeing to something. Um In the early days of
Speaker 1: informed consent as a legal requirement, doctors would often just
Speaker 1: hand waivers to patients and brusquely tell them you need
Speaker 1: to sign this before I can give you the treatment
Speaker 1: that you need. Right, you're gonna die unless I do this,
Speaker 1: sign this paper without like they wouldn't actually tell them much,
Speaker 1: you know, well, and he's doing all these like freestyle
Speaker 1: in off label surgeries. Can you just do that ship
Speaker 1: these days? Or does it have to be like this
Speaker 1: is a standardized thing that we do. And this is
Speaker 1: I mean you can do there are like less regulated
Speaker 1: forms of um um uh cosmetic surgery in particular, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to like you don't have to like
Speaker 1: like get a bunch of doctors to sign off on
Speaker 1: it necessarily, but you do have to inform them of
Speaker 1: what you're doing, what it involves, in the risks of it.
Speaker 1: And again there's still issues with this today. You know,
Speaker 1: there's people who get uh breast augmentation surgery that aren't
Speaker 1: adequately informed by by doctors even very like like prominent
Speaker 1: doctors of like the consequences of that and how it
Speaker 1: can go wrong because it's it's kind of a grifty
Speaker 1: industry a lot of the but but it's better now,
Speaker 1: right like because at least if you even if you
Speaker 1: kind of get screwed over by a doctor who doesn't
Speaker 1: inform you of the risks, you know you're going in
Speaker 1: there for a surgery, as opposed to just like well,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get a normal post pregnancy thing and
Speaker 1: he moves your clitteress, you know, like it is it is.
Speaker 1: Things have improved. Um yeah. Now we've already mentioned um yeah,
Speaker 1: so in the nineteen fifties to the yearly nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: when James performed the majority of his love surgeries, it
Speaker 1: was not uncommon for doctors to just do stuff to patients.
Speaker 1: We've already mentioned that a psotomies were commonly performed with
Speaker 1: that consent, as were the repairs. But even in this
Speaker 1: lax environment, Dr Burt stood out it is one thing
Speaker 1: to perform surgery considered necessary at the time without consent,
Speaker 1: and that's not a good thing. But it's different from
Speaker 1: performing experimental surgery on a patient's to change their genitalia
Speaker 1: without informing them. There is a difference, right. It wasn't
Speaker 1: normal to get consent for these kind of procedures in
Speaker 1: the day, But also most doctors weren't doing what he
Speaker 1: was doing, you know. M That said, the rather hazy
Speaker 1: status of consent in the medical field in the late
Speaker 1: seventies meant that doctor Bird's admissioned that he had been
Speaker 1: performing love surgery on thousands of random people did not
Speaker 1: have the impact you might expect. There were no criminal
Speaker 1: charges filed, there was no mass campaign against his medical license.
Speaker 1: This was an era in which a man seeking of
Speaker 1: assectomy would often be denied because the doctor thought he
Speaker 1: was too young. So like it's a different time in
Speaker 1: terms of our attitudes towards these things. There's ay, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little later. There is a feminist outcry
Speaker 1: against his book, but it's not about consent um because
Speaker 1: that's not really a big topic of discussion at the time.
Speaker 1: It's starting to come one by the eighties. It kind
Speaker 1: of is, but that's not that's not the main issue
Speaker 1: they have with it. Initially, James threw everything he had
Speaker 1: into a massive press campaign that followed the release of
Speaker 1: his book. He actually put his entire practice on hold
Speaker 1: to try and drum up interest in his love surgery.
Speaker 1: From a write up in the Archives of Sexual Behavior
Speaker 1: quote a month after the book's publication, the local Dayton
Speaker 1: Daily News ran an uncritical article about the surgery under
Speaker 1: the headline local doctor develops corrective surgery. In the article,
Speaker 1: Bert claimed that nearly a hundred percent of the women
Speaker 1: who had undergone love surgery were a static with the results,
Speaker 1: and his wife and co author Joan added that her
Speaker 1: husband had given women the opportunity to enjoy sex. The
Speaker 1: book provided Bert within the surgery with increased exposure, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, he began offering it as an
Speaker 1: elective for fifteen hundred dollars plus plus hospitalization costs. The
Speaker 1: two hour long surgery required five days in the hospital,
Speaker 1: at least a week of sitting on an inner tube,
Speaker 1: and six to eight weeks without sex. Yeah, oh god,
Speaker 1: it hurts. You know, it doesn't hurt. The products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast won't cause you pain. They
Speaker 1: always get informed consent. So if you play me out, uh, alright,
Speaker 1: so we're back, unfortunately, unfortunatally, so sorry. These women who
Speaker 1: are paying at least know what's going on, right, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they do at least know what's going on. Um, you
Speaker 1: can argue, I mean, there are arguments to be made
Speaker 1: that he does not provide them with and he doesn't
Speaker 1: provide them with really adequate information about the consequences of this.
Speaker 1: But they do know that they're getting a surgery to
Speaker 1: rearrange their vaginas. So that's something now that's not everyone
Speaker 1: even in this period that he performs the surgery on
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about, but he does now have people
Speaker 1: who are consenting to it, so that's a forward. Now.
Speaker 1: At the same time, doctor Burt started offering his love
Speaker 1: surgeries an elective surgery. It was legal for physicians to
Speaker 1: advertise their services, or at least not illegal, but like
Speaker 1: it was, it was the kind of thing you would
Speaker 1: get in trouble for. It was seen as a violation
Speaker 1: of the sacred trust place in doctors, a commercial profaning
Speaker 1: of the professionalism of the field. Despite this, Dr Burt
Speaker 1: used to skill at manipulating the media to act as
Speaker 1: a more effective ad blitz than any billboard. He hired
Speaker 1: a New York City PR firm to publicize love surgery,
Speaker 1: and he sat for interviews and Play Girl and on
Speaker 1: the Phil Donahue Show. Quote The Playgirl article appeared a
Speaker 1: year before Bert began offering love surgery as an elective,
Speaker 1: and in addition to speaking with Bert, Murray also interviewed
Speaker 1: several women who chose to undergo love surgery. The women
Speaker 1: whose name Murray's, the author of the Playgirl article, received
Speaker 1: from Burt, all raved about love surgery. One woman told
Speaker 1: Murray sex was so natural now that she and her
Speaker 1: husband no longer had to work at it, a sentiment
Speaker 1: expressed nearly verbatim by another woman. A third woman told
Speaker 1: Murray she easily enjoyed multiple orgasms, sometimes so strong she
Speaker 1: nearly passed out. Murray interviewed women, including Bert's wife, Joan,
Speaker 1: who told Murray that since having love surgery, she could
Speaker 1: now count on climaxing during sex. Murray, notably impressed with
Speaker 1: what these women told her about the surgery, considered it
Speaker 1: two points in the article, putting herself on Bert's operating table.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, thanks, playgirl. What we do is we
Speaker 1: take this little carrot shredder and we filed down your
Speaker 1: clip and then go to town on it. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, a circuit court ruled that the
Speaker 1: a m A could not restrict its members from advertising.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty two, the Supreme Court upheld this ruling,
Speaker 1: which is why the world of medicine works the way
Speaker 1: it does today. James Burt was well ahead of the trend.
Speaker 1: He was not the first doctor to remove the clatoral
Speaker 1: hood in order to enable faster orgasms. He was not
Speaker 1: the first doctor to offer vaginal tightening, but he was
Speaker 1: the first doctor to go to the public and shout
Speaker 1: the benefits of these surgeries. By nineteen seventy eight, he
Speaker 1: claims more than two women had requested his love surgery
Speaker 1: with their own informed consent sort of. As I mentioned
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy five on, surgeons like doctor Burt had
Speaker 1: to get informed consent before committing surgery on a patient,
Speaker 1: but the only sign that they had done so was
Speaker 1: a consent form with their signature. One sociological study from
Speaker 1: around the same period found that nearly forty percent of
Speaker 1: patients who consented to various medical studies had actually known
Speaker 1: they'd signed consent forms to participate in medical studies. The
Speaker 1: Catholic Hospital doctor performed to surgeries at Saint Elizabeth started
Speaker 1: requiring him to use a special consent form specific to
Speaker 1: love surgery in nineteen seventy nine. Many of his patients
Speaker 1: after that period claimed they either did not sign consent
Speaker 1: forms or were not informed of what they were actually signing.
Speaker 1: Many of his love surgery patients were women who came
Speaker 1: to him asking for procedures to help with than continents
Speaker 1: or post pregnancy repairs. Cheryl Sexton Dylan went to him
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four, when she was thirty six. She'd
Speaker 1: come in from minor bladder surgery and been recommended to
Speaker 1: Hyster direct to me by her doctor, who sent her
Speaker 1: to James Burt, from a write up in ABC News, quote,
Speaker 1: well she was under the knife. He performed a nine
Speaker 1: hour operation, relocating her vagina and removing her clatoral hood.
Speaker 1: Dylan said she had no idea he would do more
Speaker 1: than a standard HYS direct me. Dylan, who in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four was a vocational teacher with three children, said afterward,
Speaker 1: I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything
Speaker 1: I had ever experienced, in places I couldn't understand. She said.
Speaker 1: Even ordinary activities became impossible, sitting down, wearing pants, riding
Speaker 1: a horse. Dylan could no longer have sex without excruciating pain.
Speaker 1: Despite an understanding husband, her happy marriage eventually fell apart.
Speaker 1: It's bad Cheryl did not initially know what had been
Speaker 1: done to her. She confronted Dr Burt and asked him,
Speaker 1: what have you done? He replied, what are you asking about.
Speaker 1: It was not until she met with other doctors and
Speaker 1: was examined that she learned she had been surgically mutilated.
Speaker 1: In his press blitz and his book, James Burt presented
Speaker 1: story after story of satisfied patients. When journalists would reach
Speaker 1: out to him about his love surgery, he would connect
Speaker 1: them to women who raved about his love surgery. Those
Speaker 1: journalists never heard from Cheryl Dillon or from Janet Phillips.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty one, she went to Dr Burt for
Speaker 1: a His director and his directory meant to remove ovarian cancer.
Speaker 1: It was a significant enough procedure that she stayed in
Speaker 1: the hospital for eleven days after her surgery. As you
Speaker 1: might expect, the time was a blur, but she had
Speaker 1: strong memories of waking up several times to the site
Speaker 1: of nurses around here, clearly upset. When she finally talked
Speaker 1: to Dr Burt after her procedure and asked him if
Speaker 1: he removed all the cancer, he replied, don't worry. Everything
Speaker 1: is fine. You are going to be okay. But she
Speaker 1: was not. For eleven days of uneven recovery, she was
Speaker 1: in agony. Once she left the hospital, the pain came
Speaker 1: with her. She had no control over her bladder. When
Speaker 1: she eventually went to doctor Burt again and asked him
Speaker 1: what had happened, he told her he'd tacked up her
Speaker 1: bladder and that her muscles needed time to rejuvenate. This
Speaker 1: did not happen. Instead, her incontinence caused chronic infections. She
Speaker 1: went on antibiotics but every time she went off the antibiotics,
Speaker 1: the infections would return. Eventually, desperate for relief, Janet went
Speaker 1: to her trusted doctor again. She told him her vagina
Speaker 1: felt raw, that she experienced intense pain through vaginal intercourse.
Speaker 1: Doctor Burt responded that her husband must be bigger than
Speaker 1: I thought. She thought this was peculiar, but Janet did
Speaker 1: not yet suspect that a madman had rearranged her general's
Speaker 1: genitals without her approval. Who would She asked Dr Burt
Speaker 1: to recommend urologists, since he hadn't expressed any willingness to
Speaker 1: actually help her. He warned her not to visit another doctor,
Speaker 1: telling her I've already got you on the road to healing,
Speaker 1: and warning that another less competent physician might tear his surgery,
Speaker 1: which could cause life threatening hemorrhaging. Frightened, but trusting her doctor,
Speaker 1: Janet continued to see Doctor Burt. After every visit, he
Speaker 1: would hug her and pat her on the back. She
Speaker 1: felt safe with him and believed him when he said
Speaker 1: she was on the road to being healed. What the fuck?
Speaker 1: This is so manipulative? Yeah, it's pretty outrageous. This went
Speaker 1: on for three years, during what she continued to experience
Speaker 1: agony and bleeding during sex. Doctor Bert advised her to
Speaker 1: quote keep trying, even if it's painful. She could not
Speaker 1: control her bladder and had to wear pads constantly. Her
Speaker 1: incontinence grew worse, and by April of nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: he recommended another round of surgery to quote take the
Speaker 1: perineum down a bit. Dr Burt still insisted her complications
Speaker 1: were normal, a result of her hysterectomy. By this point,
Speaker 1: Janet's trust in her doctor had worn off. She stopped
Speaker 1: seeing him in nineteen eighty four, but did not go
Speaker 1: to another gynecologist until nineteen eighty five because she was
Speaker 1: frightened she might bleed to death if he screwed up. Eventually,
Speaker 1: when the pain got so bad that she couldn't stand
Speaker 1: it anymore, she booked an appointment with gynecologist with a
Speaker 1: gynecologist named Michael Clark from the Love Surgeon quote. Clark
Speaker 1: informed Philips her clearess had been circumcised and there was
Speaker 1: a good deal of scar tissue in the glatoral area,
Speaker 1: that her labia had been removed, and that her urine
Speaker 1: was collecting in a little pouch that resulted from the operation.
Speaker 1: He also told Philips her vagina had been redirected. To
Speaker 1: help her better understand what had been done to her,
Speaker 1: Clark drew pictures of typical female genitalia and then contrasted
Speaker 1: these drawings with her genitals. Years later, Phillips recounted how
Speaker 1: she heard the gynecologist she saw in nineteen eighty five say,
Speaker 1: as she cried in his office, that he did not
Speaker 1: know where to begin with this mess. Oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: redirected her vagina. Vagina the pouch though, I think it
Speaker 1: was that's the worst. Yeah. The book goes into significant
Speaker 1: detail about the pouch and about kind of the way
Speaker 1: like she's got constant infections. Um, nothing seems to work
Speaker 1: on them. She's either just permanently on antibiotics or she's
Speaker 1: always got an infection, just a nightmare. Um. And so
Speaker 1: it was four years after her initial surgery that Janet
Speaker 1: Phillips realized her problems were not complications from her hysterectomy.
Speaker 1: She quickly made the decision to file suit against the
Speaker 1: love surgeon. Yes, yeah, yeah, this is this is this
Speaker 1: is where the come begins to upends. Yes. Uh. Throughout
Speaker 1: this period, the early to mid nineteen eighties, James Burke
Speaker 1: was busy himself. He had fought a series of legal
Speaker 1: in pr battles to get Metropolitan Life Insurance and Blue
Speaker 1: Shield to cover his love surgery as a necessary operation.
Speaker 1: It was covered by insurance for a while. When they refused,
Speaker 1: he failed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission,
Speaker 1: claiming that love surgery was a matter of women receiving
Speaker 1: equal medical treatment, an equal rights thing. Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it comes in handy, Yeah, you'll perform a vasectomy
Speaker 1: on a man, but you won't let me carry out
Speaker 1: my experimental surgery that permanently damages people. This is Biggert
Speaker 1: treat Yeah. Millions of dollars and thousands of aaginas were
Speaker 1: at stake over the issue. To get insurance companies to
Speaker 1: treat his love surgery like a real medical treatment, he
Speaker 1: would have to convince the medical establishment that it was
Speaker 1: a real medical treatment. Dr Burt spent much of the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties conducting a series
Speaker 1: of studies and attempting to convince his colleagues to do
Speaker 1: the same. Whenever a researcher was willing, Dr Burt would
Speaker 1: connect them to all of his positive cases, the women
Speaker 1: who had reported good experiences after love surgery. He wrote
Speaker 1: his own reports and attempted to publish them, but journal
Speaker 1: authors consistently rejected them. This did change in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three when Dr Burt in a colleague Dr Shram, succeeded
Speaker 1: in convincing a finished medical journal to publish his research
Speaker 1: on the efficacy of love surgery. Now, this was not
Speaker 1: a good study. He was only interviewing women that he
Speaker 1: already knew had good experiences with it, right like there
Speaker 1: was an actual survey of all the women he'd given
Speaker 1: it to. But this study that he managed to convince
Speaker 1: the journe only to publish claimed that after love surgery,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of his patients and experienced and increased ease
Speaker 1: of ability to orgasm and some of the most tortuous
Speaker 1: and offensive logic and medical history. Doctor Burt attempted to
Speaker 1: claim that this meant his love surgery would reduce domestic violence. Sarah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, part yeah yeah, Sarah Rodriguez reports quote. Burt
Speaker 1: and Shram reported that the surgery had an additional benefit,
Speaker 1: it reduced marital violence. According to their article, nearly of
Speaker 1: those who participated reported wife beating before the surgery. After
Speaker 1: the surgery, Burton Shram claimed there was a decrease. Oh
Speaker 1: my fucking yeah. The only reason people are hitting their
Speaker 1: wives is they're not having easy enough orgasms. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's why domestic violence happens. It's these loose pusses and
Speaker 1: these buried clips. It's one of the most offensive things
Speaker 1: I can imagine putting to writing. It's bad. He's trying
Speaker 1: to outdo himself each each time he writes a new
Speaker 1: sentence on on paper, He's like, is this the worst
Speaker 1: one in the English language. Let's try again. Not quite,
Speaker 1: let me tweak it a little bit. He ought to
Speaker 1: be His typewriter should have been taken away for darn
Speaker 1: share his His typewriter should have been taken away. That
Speaker 1: study aside, Dr Bird's love surgery had virtually no acknowledgement
Speaker 1: in mainstream medical circles. Many experts decried what he was
Speaker 1: doing as dangerous and ineffective. He continued to practice and
Speaker 1: butcher for one simple reason. His love surgery was super profitable.
Speaker 1: Made a ton of money for St. Elizabeth Hospital. Just
Speaker 1: his practice in general, he made them a lot of money.
Speaker 1: They knew because he published it. That he had performed
Speaker 1: this surgery on several thousand women who had not consented
Speaker 1: to it. And the worst part of well not the
Speaker 1: worst part, but the most infuriating, the ironic part of
Speaker 1: this is St. Elizabeth's is a Catholic hospital. That's what
Speaker 1: I was about. It didn't allow abortions as elective surgery,
Speaker 1: but it allowed this guy to rearrange vaginas without the
Speaker 1: consent of his patient and defended him for years. This
Speaker 1: fucking church. Catholics are low key the bastards of this one. Um,
Speaker 1: the Catholic churches. I was raised Catholic, those guys, Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah, I mean I was raised episcopali in
Speaker 1: which is just like Catholic with ten percent less shame um,
Speaker 1: and I would take ten percent less less child molestation. Two.
Speaker 1: Although my specific chunk of the Episcopal Church might like
Speaker 1: literally the church I went to. So back in the
Speaker 1: early aughts, the Episcopal Church appointed a gay bishop in California,
Speaker 1: and it was like a big moment um for just
Speaker 1: Christianity in general. Um. This acknowledgement from one of the
Speaker 1: largest chunks of Christianity, the US, that it wasn't inherently
Speaker 1: sinful to be homosexual and it was a chunk of
Speaker 1: the Episcopal Church broke away ask and joined the African
Speaker 1: Anglican Church because they were not willing to say that
Speaker 1: gay people were weren't bad. Um, and my like the
Speaker 1: actual building that I went to, and my pastor was
Speaker 1: the guy who led that. Like, I got interviewed as
Speaker 1: a kid by news networks walking out of like youth
Speaker 1: group classes, um, like because we were like it was
Speaker 1: my church leading the charge against this gay bishop. Um,
Speaker 1: it's cool shit. Yeah, I was like twelve at the time,
Speaker 1: maybe thirteen. I didn't really know what was going on, um,
Speaker 1: because I was pretty brainwashed. But yeah, churches, it's good ship. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what won't deny elective taking a church? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely won't take you to church. Capitalism is a
Speaker 1: is a fundamentally a religious philosophy. Um, as long as
Speaker 1: religion isn't profitable, it becomes religious when religions profitable. But
Speaker 1: so I guess it. Dr Burt did make a lot
Speaker 1: of money for capitalism. Let's not think too much about that.
Speaker 1: Here's some ads. All right, we're back. Ah, we're having
Speaker 1: just a real real good time talking about this charming fella.
Speaker 1: There were calls to pull Dr Bird's license and to
Speaker 1: stop the madness, largely from feminists, whose issue initially had
Speaker 1: less to do with a lack of consent than the
Speaker 1: fact that he framed his love surgery as necessary in
Speaker 1: order to turn women into quote sexpots from a study
Speaker 1: in the Archives of Sexual Behavior Quote. In June, the
Speaker 1: Boston Women's Health Book Collective, the authors of the core
Speaker 1: feminist text Our Bodies Ourselves, sent copies of a Medical
Speaker 1: World News article about the surgery to an Ohio the
Speaker 1: Surgery of an Ohio gaynecologist two and fifty women's health
Speaker 1: organizations across the United States. It's part of their monthly
Speaker 1: mailing to these groups. Along with their article, the b
Speaker 1: w HBC enclosed a letter saying they were appalled by
Speaker 1: the vaginal and clitoral mutilation recommended by Dr James C. Burt.
Speaker 1: To suggest. The letter continued that women need vaginal surgery
Speaker 1: because they do not have orgasms with each penile. Vaginal
Speaker 1: intercourse is to inflict upon women male fantasies and assumptions
Speaker 1: about female sexuality. The b w HBC condemned the surgery
Speaker 1: is sexist, and with their letters, sought to pressure Burt
Speaker 1: to stop performing it um. So again, there are obviously
Speaker 1: in the right, but it is interesting that their issue
Speaker 1: is not a consent thing. It's um. It has more
Speaker 1: to do with just like how inherently misogynists the idea
Speaker 1: of the surgery is right, which also valid point, perfectly
Speaker 1: valid point angry feminists. One point. It does note that
Speaker 1: like um, it is worth noting that, like yeah, like that.
Speaker 1: That shows you just the fact that consent isn't there issue,
Speaker 1: how little of a topic of discussion it is even
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen seventies. In late nineteen eighty, he
Speaker 1: took a job appearing on a weekly radio talk show
Speaker 1: for an hour every week. His show, Love Doctor was
Speaker 1: billed as an opportunity for listeners to hear his take
Speaker 1: on sex, sexual and kind of collogical problems, as well
Speaker 1: as his work in female reconstructive surgery. There was an
Speaker 1: immediate outcry against this, but that's sort of what the
Speaker 1: radio station had been banking on. They built him as controversial,
Speaker 1: and press reports on his show repeated that word ad nauseum,
Speaker 1: as if controversy was the apt term for people angry
Speaker 1: at a man who reinvented vaginas and tested out his
Speaker 1: new surgery without asking. Dr Burt told his new listeners
Speaker 1: that traditional gynecology was deficient. Of course, this guy has
Speaker 1: not met one structure or system that he didn't think
Speaker 1: was deficient. Yeah, because he knows best, you know, he's
Speaker 1: the love doctor. Throughout the mid nineteen eighties, medical outcry
Speaker 1: against Dr Bert continued to build. A number of his
Speaker 1: colleagues filed private complaints against him, but, as The New
Speaker 1: York Times reported, most doctors and nurses were too frightened
Speaker 1: of his influence to take any real action. Quote. Gynecologists
Speaker 1: knew about doctor Burt's surgery and recognized it when they
Speaker 1: examined his former patients. Doctors would say, Bert's done surgery
Speaker 1: on you, hasn't he says Joey Martin, on whom he
Speaker 1: performed his surgery. We've all had doctor Burt's patients, and
Speaker 1: we've tried to undo the work he has done, said
Speaker 1: doctor Robert Hilty, a gynecologist who was chairman of the
Speaker 1: Department of Obstetstetrics and Gynecology at Cattering Medical Center in
Speaker 1: Dayton for eighteen years. But we need the freedom to
Speaker 1: openly criticize without fear of legal retribution. So again, these
Speaker 1: guys are terrified because Number one, the hospital where a
Speaker 1: lot of them work, is backing this dude. Number two,
Speaker 1: he's got money, so he can destroy you. If you
Speaker 1: come after him, he can destroy your practice. He's got
Speaker 1: a lot of power. The end for doctor Burt began
Speaker 1: when a number of his victims, women who had gradually
Speaker 1: pieced together the truth of what he'd done to them,
Speaker 1: started to make their voices heard. One of these women
Speaker 1: was Cheryld Dylan. It took our out a year from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five to fully understand what had been done
Speaker 1: to her. After months went by with intense pain, she
Speaker 1: decided to seek a second opinion and went to a
Speaker 1: doctor at the University of Cincinnati. She recalled, he looked
Speaker 1: at me and called in one of the nurses and said,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen anything like this? He had repositioned
Speaker 1: my vagina and circumcised me. The doctor said he had
Speaker 1: never seen it anywhere except in African tribes. Dylan sued
Speaker 1: Dr Burt and St. Elizabeth Medical Hospital for malpractice in
Speaker 1: eight nineteen eighty five. She won by default, but got nothing,
Speaker 1: as the good doctor had no asset she could easily garnish.
Speaker 1: Dylan settled out of court with the hospital for an
Speaker 1: undisclosed sum. Again he's done like the thing that people
Speaker 1: with money do. Where you're able, you know, you know
Speaker 1: how to hide your money and if you give you
Speaker 1: that kind of guy. The end finally came for doctor
Speaker 1: James Burt as a result of the sheer number of
Speaker 1: women he abused. Like Cheryl Dylan and Janet Phillips, they
Speaker 1: all gradually and fits and starts figured out what had
Speaker 1: been done. One of the people who helped put the
Speaker 1: pieces together was another much her doctor Bradley Busaco, an
Speaker 1: obstetrician who would eventually see some one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: of doctor Bert's love surgery patients. His first encounter with
Speaker 1: the bad doctors where it came in nineteen eight six
Speaker 1: as the result of a referral from a lawyer representing
Speaker 1: one of doctor Bird's patients. The Chicago Tribune reports that quote.
Speaker 1: By the time she found Busaco, her attorney said she
Speaker 1: had been rejected by Dayton doctors who did not want
Speaker 1: to treat a patients of Birds, a powerful doctor in
Speaker 1: Dayton medical circles. She was in pain from bladdering urinary
Speaker 1: infections and from the friction of clothes against her genital area.
Speaker 1: And now. At first Dr Busaco thought the woman on
Speaker 1: his table was quote just a little off, but in
Speaker 1: time he realized, with donning horror, what had been done
Speaker 1: to her. It was not an easy decision for him
Speaker 1: to go public against Dr James Burt. Doctors kind of
Speaker 1: like cops, tend to support each other, and this was
Speaker 1: even more common in the day, Like it was very uncommon.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of white wall of science of silence.
Speaker 1: You you support each other, you don't testify against each other,
Speaker 1: you don't go up against another doctor. You're kind of
Speaker 1: all in this together, right, That's this attitude. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's still pervasive today. It was even more so back
Speaker 1: back then. But Busaco couldn't just sit back and let
Speaker 1: this keep happening. He signed a complaint with the state
Speaker 1: Medical Board that started the first official investigation into Dr
Speaker 1: Burt from an article in the Chicago Tribune. Quote. After
Speaker 1: much soul searching and consulting with his wife, Peggy Boussaco
Speaker 1: decided he had a duty to help the women and
Speaker 1: turned Bert into state officials. His decision was consistent with
Speaker 1: his interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath, which requires that a
Speaker 1: physician do no harm. I had talked with lie sam Bold,
Speaker 1: this is the lawyer a lot of these women work with,
Speaker 1: and told her I decided it would be very difficult
Speaker 1: for me to live if I didn't do it, and
Speaker 1: I told her I was going to cooperate with the
Speaker 1: State Medical Board and with her. Busaco said the risks
Speaker 1: were significant. Busaco and his wife stealed themselves for what
Speaker 1: was to come. They knew they were challenging an unwritten
Speaker 1: code among medical professionals. Doctors don't turn on each other.
Speaker 1: I was only thinking that this was a clear moral decision.
Speaker 1: There was no gray area here. Peggy Busaco said Doctor
Speaker 1: Burt was guilty of monstrous acts. And I didn't see
Speaker 1: that we had a choice. I guess I really felt
Speaker 1: we were on the right side and it was a
Speaker 1: clear choice. And I never thought there would be that
Speaker 1: many negative repercussions, but there were. Dr Burt immediately sued Busaco.
Speaker 1: He started pushing his influential connections earned from a long
Speaker 1: career of making a lot of money for the hospital.
Speaker 1: A Mount Washington plastic surgeon wrote an open letter criticizing
Speaker 1: Dr Busaco. Doctors he worked with would take him aside
Speaker 1: in private and advise him to drop the case, saying
Speaker 1: he'd made a mistake. A high up official at the
Speaker 1: university where Boussaco taught warned him that his job was
Speaker 1: on the line if he continued. Yes, he goes like
Speaker 1: it's a significant act of moral courage for him to
Speaker 1: do this. It is not an easy thing. Um quote.
Speaker 1: I had heard from several physicians I knew well and
Speaker 1: respected who told me I was doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Busaco said. The worst thing that could have happened is
Speaker 1: I could have been blackballed, probably that physicians would not
Speaker 1: have referred patients to me for second opinions. He told
Speaker 1: his wife that they might have to leave home for
Speaker 1: a new state if things went badly. But then in
Speaker 1: n the news media caught up to the fact something
Speaker 1: deeply fucked up was going on with the love surgeon.
Speaker 1: CBS ran a major investigation. They interviewed Dr Busaco, who
Speaker 1: agreed to speak in the hope that it would warn
Speaker 1: other women away from receiving this surgery. CBS also talked
Speaker 1: to Cheryl Bilan, who went into gruesome detail about her
Speaker 1: experiences on national TV. She told the world, we have
Speaker 1: to stop this man. I don't want to die young
Speaker 1: and have my daughter go to the same doctor. When
Speaker 1: he was reached for comment, James Burt called the report
Speaker 1: a conspiracy of lies, but by this point he was
Speaker 1: unable to fight further. Doctor Burt had made the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies equivalent of more than four hundred thousand dollars per year,
Speaker 1: but following the decision of Love and Sure Of insurance
Speaker 1: companies to stop covering love surgery, his income fell substantially
Speaker 1: from the love surgeon quote. Rumors of Joan and James
Speaker 1: Burt's debts began to be more than speculation. In late
Speaker 1: September nineteen eighty, a local art Gallleries sued the couple
Speaker 1: for not paying for a bronze sculpture and two paintings
Speaker 1: delivered to the Burt home in January nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: The Bert's contended that the pieces were left at their
Speaker 1: home on an approval races. The gallery contended, and the
Speaker 1: court agreed that the Birds needed to pay the galley
Speaker 1: six thousand, two dollars and fifty cents with interest for
Speaker 1: the art. In nine one, James Burtt filed for bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: but it was dismissed um because he he was they
Speaker 1: thought he was making too much money, like he was
Speaker 1: trying to he was filing for bankruptcy, but they knew
Speaker 1: he was just hiding assets, right, Like he's making less
Speaker 1: money now he's having problems, but he's also like clearly
Speaker 1: lying about his assets. Could we just say those women
Speaker 1: that started the P two movement, they're the heroes of
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely. Yeah. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the the women who like went went to bat against
Speaker 1: this guy, the lawyer who collected all of these different
Speaker 1: cases and pursued it so doggedly. The one doctor who
Speaker 1: finally decided to Yeah, I mean, and a lot of
Speaker 1: doctors made private complaints, but like what makes Busaco noteworthy
Speaker 1: is he did he decided private wasn't enough. You have
Speaker 1: to go public with this, you know. Um, yeah, all
Speaker 1: of those people. And it's also it says a lot
Speaker 1: that it took all of those people for sure, guy down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it takes a lot. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: like today, I mean, I don't know, like obviously this
Speaker 1: is a super wretched version of events, but like people
Speaker 1: doing experimental ship like that today, or like those weird
Speaker 1: laser vaginal tightening things like what's going on there? Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: To make ends meet and to cover his growing debts.
Speaker 1: Dr Burt Smith the early nineteen eighties teaching his love
Speaker 1: surgery to other doctors, all while attempting to gaslight his
Speaker 1: patients and fight off the first lawsuits brought against him.
Speaker 1: By the number of lawsuits and the number of verified
Speaker 1: victims had risen to several hundred. One malpractice suit against
Speaker 1: him included thirty three women who said they'd never consented
Speaker 1: to genital reconstruction. Here's a selection of quotes from some
Speaker 1: of these women right now. I feel I've been raped.
Speaker 1: I thought I die. The pain was unlike anything I
Speaker 1: had ever experienced. In places. I couldn't understand the way
Speaker 1: I was deformed. I couldn't have sex. I ended up
Speaker 1: going through three different corrective surgeries. You're raised to trust
Speaker 1: your minister, your policeman, and your doctor. He was the
Speaker 1: one with a degree on the wall. He knew medicine
Speaker 1: better than I did. I didn't think he would hurt me,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why he did that unless he
Speaker 1: hates women. Oh that's the most damning thing of all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, why else would you do ship like this
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. Yeah. In December of the
Speaker 1: Ohio Medical Board label Burt grossly unprofessional and charged him
Speaker 1: with forty one violations of ethics. The board said that
Speaker 1: he regularly caused permanent physical damage due to his experimental
Speaker 1: and medically unnecessary surgical procedures. In January of nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Dr Burt surrendered his license in order to avoid a
Speaker 1: medical board hearing that might have uncovered information even more
Speaker 1: damning than the stuff we've talked about today. He almost
Speaker 1: immediately declared bankruptcy over his inability to pay them more
Speaker 1: than twenty one million dollars in malpractice lawsuits filed against
Speaker 1: him for medical bag quote. Even after surrendering his medical license,
Speaker 1: brit maintained his innocence. He blamed his situation on an
Speaker 1: unjustified crucifixion and an avalanche of yellow journalism. He insisted,
Speaker 1: my medical practice has been conducted with great concern for
Speaker 1: the welfare of women. There are a lot of women
Speaker 1: with problems involving vaginal intercourse that are either not being
Speaker 1: adequately addressed or not being addressed at all. His son
Speaker 1: also came to his defense at the time, reporting there
Speaker 1: are hundreds and hundreds of doctor Burt's patients alive today
Speaker 1: whose marriages and lives were dramatically improved by his wholesome
Speaker 1: restoration to their fully functioning sexual responsiveness, which most of
Speaker 1: those patients had previously enjoyed earlier in their marriages. That's it,
Speaker 1: that's all. He got no jail, not saying he's got no.
Speaker 1: He might still be alive and in Florida. I think
Speaker 1: it is no. No, she left him. He might have
Speaker 1: got married since, but she left him money. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: also she's kind of a bastard. Yeah, she is. She's
Speaker 1: she's terrible too. UM's not, she's not as terrible. She
Speaker 1: hasn't execute but maybe she had a mote. You know,
Speaker 1: she's like in her thirties, she has this come to
Speaker 1: Jesus moment. She's like, you know, yeah, people could change,
Speaker 1: Jones can change, can change. And the fact that he
Speaker 1: kind of took her when she was so young one,
Speaker 1: it's not great. You know, it's better than marrying a teenager,
Speaker 1: but not by a whole lot. Um. I'm sure she
Speaker 1: she was not. She didn't have money. All all the
Speaker 1: money was his. He performed his surgery on her. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a messy. I'm sure. My hope is, yeah, that
Speaker 1: she actually recognized that she had been party to something
Speaker 1: terrible and that's why she left as supposed to just
Speaker 1: being like, well this is over, time to like roll
Speaker 1: out something new. I don't know. I wish her the best,
Speaker 1: but I also wish that she has some understanding of
Speaker 1: how she contributed to these arms. Yeah, so how you
Speaker 1: feel in Courtney, I'm unclenching my vagina, letting it know
Speaker 1: that it is safe to come back out. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: old enough now that even if he gets out of Florida,
Speaker 1: he's pretty slow. He's not he's not going to catch anybody.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Yeah, you can probably take him down with
Speaker 1: like a solid whack from a broom. His bones have
Speaker 1: got to be brittle as hell by this point. We
Speaker 1: have what you know, he should go out with the surgery.
Speaker 1: We have a special surgery for you, Dr Burt. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take your anus and put it where your mouth is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've decided your body was not properly designed for all
Speaker 1: of the ship that you spew out of your mouth.
Speaker 1: So we're just going to redirect your your digestive system
Speaker 1: out of your mouth. Um, We're adding an extra tongue too,
Speaker 1: so you can really enjoy the results of the surgery. Here,
Speaker 1: Sign this, yes, Sign this. Yeah. How's everybody feeling? We
Speaker 1: all be all goods? Yeah. I found this after because
Speaker 1: I was doing the There was a comment during the
Speaker 1: Kellogg episodes because we were talking about like cli erectomys
Speaker 1: um and how common they were in like the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds as a treatment for a masturbation,
Speaker 1: and I someone had asked me, Miles asked me how
Speaker 1: common it was, and I said, basically, you know, it
Speaker 1: seems like it was pretty common, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: like double check that. Anyway, I wound up on the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page talk about cli erectomies in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it was like this guy existed and he thought
Speaker 1: he could rearrange the vagina and it involved cutting the
Speaker 1: clitteress um. And I was like, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: fucking story, and my god, it was sure was Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you imagine just your clint being so exposed, like
Speaker 1: like a light socket just when anything. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it in any way, but it's it seems
Speaker 1: like he had a lot of bad ideas. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems terrible. Oh man, good stuff, Core, you got any
Speaker 1: pluggables for us? Well, if that didn't completely turn you
Speaker 1: off of sex, head on over to Private Parts Unknown podcast.
Speaker 1: I co host with Sophia Alexandra, a delightful, hilarious person,
Speaker 1: and we have positive conversations about sex. Check it out.
Speaker 1: Do that it's deliful and not horrifying. Like this makes
Speaker 1: your agency back? Robert, you want to enter? Want to
Speaker 1: enter podcast? No? No, I don't, Sophie. He's Robert Evan.
Speaker 1: You can follow him on Twitter at I right, okay,
Speaker 1: you can follow us at bastard spot on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram and we'll be back next week with another horrible tale.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could just we could just keep off
Speaker 1: wordly podcasting for days. We could try to break a
Speaker 1: world record, Sophie, we don't have to end this now.
Speaker 1: I'd really rather not, but like go off, well, you know,
Speaker 1: gosh it, I don't have anything else, Sophie, I don't
Speaker 1: have anything else. Then awkward And to the podcast. Sweet
Speaker 1: listeners made flights of angels singly away from the Love Doctor.
Speaker 1: H h