Speaker 1: What's without an introduction my podcast. I'm Robert Evans, host
Speaker 1: of Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything about the worst people in all of history and
Speaker 1: are chronically unprepared to actually start the show that allows
Speaker 1: me to pay rent and buy food. Um, I'm ashamed
Speaker 1: of me. I'm sure Sophie's ashamed of me, but I
Speaker 1: can't know. Oh now I can know because she said yes.
Speaker 1: But you know who's fifty chance not ashamed of me?
Speaker 1: My guest today, Mr Billy Wayne Davis. I am not.
Speaker 1: I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? That's what I shoot for, Like you
Speaker 1: pulled it out kind of yeah. Yeah, but everybody listening
Speaker 1: is going come on, man, yeah, I'm uh. You know.
Speaker 1: The lesson I learned long ago is that if I
Speaker 1: just keep talking, um, about sixty percent of the time,
Speaker 1: I can pull victory from failure. Um. And I learned
Speaker 1: that lesson with cops, but it applies to podcasting too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think it applies to a lot more of
Speaker 1: life than it should that if you just keep talking
Speaker 1: a lot of times, most people be like, all right,
Speaker 1: just get it, all right, just get going. Speaking of
Speaker 1: getting going, Billy Wayne, have you ever used a fertility doctor?
Speaker 1: That is an inappropriate questions? I'm pre open um. I
Speaker 1: have two kids, and I wasn't actively planning but either
Speaker 1: of them. I wasn't upset that it happened either. But no,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't. Okay, Well, um, would you be
Speaker 1: would you be surprised? Like? What do you what do
Speaker 1: you think when you think like a fertility doctor? Like,
Speaker 1: do you have any sort of conceptions in your head
Speaker 1: about the kind of person who would take that job?
Speaker 1: I think it feels like someone that wants to help
Speaker 1: couples create life and create a family. That seems like
Speaker 1: a like somebody like a family doctor that was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at making this happen. So I and
Speaker 1: I have a good bedside manner. Let's go that help
Speaker 1: see these people out. It seems like like a fundamentally
Speaker 1: noble endeavor, right, Yeah, I like that. It seems correct,
Speaker 1: It seems noble. Well, the working title of our episode
Speaker 1: is all fertility doctors are bastards. Uh, and that's that's
Speaker 1: not entirely fair. And the the large fertility doctor contingent
Speaker 1: of bastards pod listeners are probably angry, but I will
Speaker 1: say from everything I can tell, it is a field
Speaker 1: with like a shockingly high rate of a very specific
Speaker 1: type of bastard. And that's what we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about today. Yeah, it's weird. Um, it'll all make sense
Speaker 1: in the end, but the journey is going to be
Speaker 1: a little bizarre. See m M, you know what that's.
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as they get as long as
Speaker 1: we get them graduated from medical school, I think we're
Speaker 1: step ahead of everything else we've done. Well. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: these are definitely I don't know. You know actually, Billy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: put a pin in that because you and I primarily
Speaker 1: talk about fake doctors, and it's really debatable as to
Speaker 1: whether or not a lot of these people are, Like
Speaker 1: they all have m d s. So I will say,
Speaker 1: like in that regard, yes, they're more real than the
Speaker 1: fake doctors we normally talk about. But I think in
Speaker 1: a fundamental way, all of the people were talking about
Speaker 1: today are in fact fake doctors, regardless of their real
Speaker 1: um m D credentials. See it's like, you don't think
Speaker 1: of that part of doctor because yeah, you think that
Speaker 1: law there's a lot of lawyers that go to that
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, and they're like, yeah, I'm technically a lawyer,
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, whatever. I mean, your whole profession
Speaker 1: is technicalities anyway, But yeah, a doctor is that I'm
Speaker 1: a doctor? Next, son of a bitch? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is an episode about the gray area
Speaker 1: and the fake doctor designation. So we'll we'll circle back
Speaker 1: around to discussing that around the end if I remember too,
Speaker 1: because about eighty percent of the time when I say
Speaker 1: we'll circle back to something, we completely forget um and
Speaker 1: never do. And that is also one of the hallmarks
Speaker 1: of my show, along with terrible introductions. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: episode originally started as a fan submission of a subject,
Speaker 1: Dr Norman Barrwin. Uh. He's a Canadian fertility doctor who
Speaker 1: is a real piece of ship. And we will still
Speaker 1: be talking about Dr Barwin, but as I dug into
Speaker 1: his story, I come upon a bigger, weirder, and bastardier
Speaker 1: story and that is what we will be talking about today. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a million different places we could start, but
Speaker 1: in the interest of simplicity, I'm going to kick it
Speaker 1: off in nineteen thirty nine with the birth of Bernard
Speaker 1: Norman Barwin. Barwin was born in South Africa to parents
Speaker 1: who I'm sure existed at some point, but I do
Speaker 1: not know you know anything else at all about them? Uh,
Speaker 1: not a lot of information on this guy's early life. Um,
Speaker 1: we do know that he went to college at the
Speaker 1: Queen's University in Northern Ireland and moved to Canada in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies to work as a doctor, and on paper,
Speaker 1: his career looked about as woken wonderful as it's possible
Speaker 1: to be. Norman founded the first sexual health clinic for
Speaker 1: schools in Ottawa. He was a very public and charismatic
Speaker 1: advocate for expanded sex education and reproductive medicine. He spent
Speaker 1: time driving around the Canadian capital and what he called
Speaker 1: a sex bus. Now it's pre internet, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pre internet because there's a bang bus in Florida I
Speaker 1: knew about. Yeah, this is very different from the bang bus. Um.
Speaker 1: Rather than being the set for a low budget porn
Speaker 1: the sex bus was a way for Dr Barwin to
Speaker 1: distribute pamphlets on sexual health. Many d walked into that bus.
Speaker 1: So this is not what. Don't go in there, man,
Speaker 1: They got reading stuffs, just paper. I love that the
Speaker 1: passers by uh that that we voiced in our episodes
Speaker 1: are always Southerners, even when we're talking about Ottawa. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is. I mean, to quote the comedian Jesse Case,
Speaker 1: who's Southern. He was like, I mean it sucks, but
Speaker 1: when I even when Southerners do a dumb voice, it's
Speaker 1: just a more Southern voice. And you're like, that's so true.
Speaker 1: You're doing the guy from the town over, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: the dumber guy in your neighborhood, dumb dogs. And you're like,
Speaker 1: I think King of the Hill is the ultimate example
Speaker 1: of that, because like every one of Hank's friends is
Speaker 1: a different sort of fake Southern voice that I would
Speaker 1: do based on somebody. I know. It's the it's my
Speaker 1: judge doing that. It's just him watching people in his alley,
Speaker 1: going like I can do all these voices. I think,
Speaker 1: uh so um yeah. Barwin, the Good Dr. Barwin was
Speaker 1: an early advocate for abortion rights. He also grew increasingly
Speaker 1: interested in finding ways to help single women and lesbian
Speaker 1: couples have babies, and over time this grew into an
Speaker 1: interest in fertility in general. Now artificial insemination. Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: traces its roots back to the seventeen hundreds, when a
Speaker 1: Gottish surgeon what other nationality would have been behind it?
Speaker 1: Named John Hunter impregnated a woman with her husband's sperm.
Speaker 1: According to the National Institutes of Health quote, a cloth
Speaker 1: merchant with severe hypospattius was advised to collect the seamen
Speaker 1: which escaped during coitus in a warmed syringe and inject
Speaker 1: the sample into the vagina. Now, hypospattius is a birth
Speaker 1: defect where the opening of your penis is on the
Speaker 1: bottom of the head rather than its normal location. So
Speaker 1: that's the first recorded artificial human insemination. But a clockmaker
Speaker 1: is that what she said? Uh? Yeah, a cloth merchant
Speaker 1: is the guy is the guy who like was having
Speaker 1: trouble knock and his wife. Doctor was like, the way
Speaker 1: I heard you say it was that they hired him
Speaker 1: to take the sample, and I was like, what a
Speaker 1: weird choice. No, no, no, no, that's the that was
Speaker 1: the client. John Hunter was just like, yeah, we just
Speaker 1: get to get you a warm syringe, fill it with
Speaker 1: com and use that as your penis. And he was right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was right, Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. So for
Speaker 1: most of the next couple of centuries, artificial and eimination
Speaker 1: was primarily the purview of farmers and mainly used on
Speaker 1: livestock like cows. Human beings did figure out how to
Speaker 1: successfully free sperm in order to keep them viable in
Speaker 1: about nineteen fifty three, but a lot of people thought
Speaker 1: it was a moral to do that with human sperm,
Speaker 1: and so it wasn't until the nineteen seventies that artificial
Speaker 1: insemination of human beings really took off as a practice
Speaker 1: and started to become very common. What happened that it
Speaker 1: became okay, I don't know, I think just enough old
Speaker 1: people died off, and like everyone else was like, oh,
Speaker 1: why do we give a shit about this? Seven everybody's
Speaker 1: on fucking cocaine, like whatever. Yeah, uh so. Dr Norman
Speaker 1: Barrwin then came of age as a doctor at a
Speaker 1: time when sort of the very first generation of professional
Speaker 1: fertility doctors were starting to become a thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's been some before, but he was really with like
Speaker 1: the first wave of people who made it into kind
Speaker 1: of a mainstream profession. So he was very much on
Speaker 1: the cutting edge of this science. Tony Hawk, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: Tony Hawk. He's the Tony Hawk of using cold sperm
Speaker 1: to impregnate women whose husbands are having difficulties doing that
Speaker 1: for some reason. That's yeah, yep, yep, a shoot for something,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, I mean Tony Hawk also has a
Speaker 1: weird cold sperm obsession, but we'll save that for the Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you're true Tony Hawk Fane, you know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Oh yeah, very well aware. Now. Barwin
Speaker 1: quickly rose to become the president of the Canadian Fertility
Speaker 1: Society and eventually also the president of the Planned Parenthood
Speaker 1: Federation of Canada. Barwin worked as a professor of obstetrics
Speaker 1: and gynecology at the University of Ottawa and I also
Speaker 1: had a healthy career as a gynecologist. Yeah, so far,
Speaker 1: he's he's the realist doctor we've talked about, right, without
Speaker 1: a doubt. There's no there's no bleach. Uh, there's no yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he hasn't drowned trying to make them. It's like the
Speaker 1: opposite of what we've been talking about. So right now,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this guy is great. Yeah, right now, this
Speaker 1: guy does actually seem to be a great doctor. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course, uh, while he worked you know in
Speaker 1: a kind of wore a lot of hats as a
Speaker 1: medical professional, his real passion was increasingly fertility, and once
Speaker 1: he left the University of Ottawa, he devoted the bulk
Speaker 1: of his time to helping parents get pregnant. Dr Barwin
Speaker 1: was beloved by many of his patients. He was invested
Speaker 1: into the Order of Canada for his quote profound impact
Speaker 1: on both the biological and psychosocial aspects of women's productive health.
Speaker 1: He won the Barber cass Begs Award for Women's Reproductive
Speaker 1: Rights and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for his pioneering
Speaker 1: success and helping women conceive uh. In fact, Dr Norman
Speaker 1: Barwin developed such a reputation for his ability to help
Speaker 1: infertile couples make babies that his patients started giving him
Speaker 1: a nickname, the baby God. Oh wow, I'm sure that Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, let's just back off that one. It's just
Speaker 1: that is a weird thing to call someone like like I,
Speaker 1: I yeah, I don't say, well, like you said like
Speaker 1: one or two people like hey, the baby got over
Speaker 1: there and then it catching on is very strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if I had an intractable health issue, like say
Speaker 1: I had a U T I and like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: couldn't get it fixed for like years until like I
Speaker 1: finally found a doctor who was like able to deal
Speaker 1: with the problem. I wouldn't call him the urinary tract God.
Speaker 1: That would be bizarre. That would that would seem weird
Speaker 1: and not like a compliment. No, no, And he would
Speaker 1: be like, hey, let's let's don't you shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: You don't say that, you should say that. I'll give
Speaker 1: you another one if you if you never say that again.
Speaker 1: But doctor, Yeah, he makes babies. And you're like like
Speaker 1: as like, yeah, if your wife came home, she's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go see the baby God, and
Speaker 1: you're like, hmmm, I want to go with you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go with you. Yeah, I'm I'm gonna check out
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah. Yeah. And they spoiler they absolutely should
Speaker 1: have been checking out this guy, because I think that's
Speaker 1: what they called Sean Camp was the baby got the
Speaker 1: baby God. He just had a lot of kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair. Yeah, yeah, they should have called him Doc
Speaker 1: stork Um. That was good. That's good. That's better, that's better.
Speaker 1: And that's not creepy. That's like homie and like kind
Speaker 1: of warm. You know. Baby God is is creepy. It
Speaker 1: is creepy, like you too, Yeah, he can kill your baby.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of uh, from my fellow nerds
Speaker 1: out there, one of the best monsters in the Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, like third edition Monster Manual was this giant,
Speaker 1: hovering aborded god fetus. It's very cool monster. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a reference for the nine people uh
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast right now. I know, I got
Speaker 1: I just kind of zoned out and then I zoned
Speaker 1: back in when you said aboarded god atis where I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing over there? That's what reels
Speaker 1: them all back in is aborted god fetus. Hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, say that again. Gods can have abortions, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they can. Yeah, and when they have an abortion, that
Speaker 1: abortion is also a god. That is the problem is
Speaker 1: not a happy one where abortions become God's because you
Speaker 1: can't get son of a bitch. So the baby God
Speaker 1: was the Dr Norman Barwin that the vast, vast majority
Speaker 1: of people in Canada knew up until quite recently, and
Speaker 1: to most of them he was considered a hero. But
Speaker 1: there were some signs early on that not all was
Speaker 1: well in Dr Barwin's practice in Nive. He made a
Speaker 1: mistake and gave a couple the wrong sperm for their child. Now,
Speaker 1: considering how new the science of fertility was in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, that Air made relatively little impact in his career.
Speaker 1: Everybody's gonna screw up, even groundbreaking physicians. You can't make
Speaker 1: babies without spilling a little bit of spine. I mean
Speaker 1: when you said it, I was like, I mean, whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna sunk up. Like and you, you know, you
Speaker 1: consider other doctor mistakes were like a guy dies on
Speaker 1: the operating table. A baby that's slightly different from the
Speaker 1: baby you intended to have, not a big deal, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, jump,
Speaker 1: this one's way better. Yeah yeah, we both have exzemo.
Speaker 1: This baby is gonna do great, fantastic. So in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen nineties, though, it happened again. A lesbian couple
Speaker 1: sued Dr Barwin for giving them semen other than the
Speaker 1: semen that they had selected from their chosen donor. Yeah yeah, Now.
Speaker 1: According to the Toronto Star quote, that incident was designated
Speaker 1: a prior error in the agreed statement of facts presented
Speaker 1: to the panel Thursday. On that occasion. Barwin was notified
Speaker 1: of this error by the College of Physicians and Surgeons
Speaker 1: of Ontario and states that he took some steps to
Speaker 1: endeavor to ensure that no such errors would occur in
Speaker 1: his practice in the future. So again, two errors, you know,
Speaker 1: in like a decade, really not a big deal. But
Speaker 1: the errors kept happening twice more during the late nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: and since Dr Barwin inseimilated a lot of ladies, he
Speaker 1: was still generally seen by most people is incredibly good
Speaker 1: at it, although it was now clear that there were
Speaker 1: some issues in his practice. That said, his high success
Speaker 1: rate meant he would still be the guy that you'd
Speaker 1: go to when other fertility doctors couldn't get you knocked up,
Speaker 1: So the mistakes kind of got swept under the rug.
Speaker 1: Nobody thought anything sinister was going on. Dr Barwin continued
Speaker 1: his career as a celebrated physician. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: during an interview, he told a reporter that accidentally inseminating
Speaker 1: a patient with the wrong sperm was his quote worst nightmare,
Speaker 1: which you know, yeah, now a decade later that nightmare
Speaker 1: burst onto the public stage. Like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: should have made like an analogy to to like, you know,
Speaker 1: water breaking or something, but I didn't think too and
Speaker 1: I can't properly word it now. I think we're okay
Speaker 1: without it, you know what I mean? So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think like burst onto the stage like a bunch of
Speaker 1: amniotic fluid. That good? Yeah, or just yeah because and
Speaker 1: here's the thing, like just slowly took its time coming out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's really usually have they in my experience,
Speaker 1: like they're not like, hey, I'm here, They're like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they kind of don't want to leave, which considering the world,
Speaker 1: makes sense. Oh yeah, No, I'm still every time I
Speaker 1: think about him, like it seems like that we started
Speaker 1: off in the best bond. Yeah. Every time I have
Speaker 1: to wake up, I am reminded of how difficult it
Speaker 1: must be to be a baby. You down and you
Speaker 1: feel your belly out and you're like, damn it, goddamnit,
Speaker 1: still not there. So. Dr Barwin was found to have
Speaker 1: mixed up the sperm that had created four of the
Speaker 1: babies born from his clinic. According to the Star Quote,
Speaker 1: at least four of those babies aren't the biological result
Speaker 1: of their fathers or the sperm donor designated by their
Speaker 1: mothers because of mistakes at Barwin's clinic experts, dispatched to
Speaker 1: review procedures at the facility, could isolate no evident reasons
Speaker 1: for the mix up. Those children will never know the
Speaker 1: male side of their parentage, thus left forever ignorant of
Speaker 1: crucial medical history details. So one of those babies had
Speaker 1: grown into a man by two thousand thirteen, and he
Speaker 1: testified against Dr Barwin and had to essentially explain what
Speaker 1: damage had been done to him as the result of
Speaker 1: the fact that nobody knew who his biological father might be.
Speaker 1: The twenty five year old asked, why do I look
Speaker 1: like this? Who do I look like? I know I
Speaker 1: look like my mother, But what about the other side?
Speaker 1: I'll never know? Yes, I'm grateful I'm here, but there's
Speaker 1: the other side, another story. I don't know my medical history,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of scary. It's like, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a real problem, you know. Uh. And these funk ups
Speaker 1: at this point, by like isn't thirteen were bad enough
Speaker 1: that Dr Barwin was finally punished, albeit with the medical
Speaker 1: equivalent of a slap on the wrist. He was found
Speaker 1: guilty of unprofessional conduct and incompetence, and his medical license
Speaker 1: was suspended for sixty days. He also had to thirty
Speaker 1: dollars in legal fees. The young man who testified against
Speaker 1: him was not satisfied by this justice just a two
Speaker 1: month band, He said afterwards, I think you should completely
Speaker 1: lose his license. So I don't know at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, I mean to be honest, if I'm like,
Speaker 1: if I'm like trying to evaluate it fairly and I
Speaker 1: don't know the rest of the story, five or six
Speaker 1: errors in like forty years, it doesn't seem that bad.
Speaker 1: I don't. That's where I'm at right now too. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I feel like, I don't know. Have you
Speaker 1: played baseball? It's mostly years. It's hard. Yeah, everybody sucks
Speaker 1: up more than that, Like you, I know, like we
Speaker 1: hold doctors to a higher standard, but still well in
Speaker 1: the theory we do. But I'm completely with you on
Speaker 1: this where it's like I just feel like he's and
Speaker 1: when he sucks up, you still get a baby. You
Speaker 1: still got a baby. Yeah, there's not alligators coming out
Speaker 1: of women's like like woombsy, Like he's not sucking up
Speaker 1: that bad. He gave you just not exactly what you wanted,
Speaker 1: which feels like what God does anyway in theory, that's
Speaker 1: just having a kid. Yeah. Now, most doctors probably would
Speaker 1: have gotten harsher punishments than a sixty days suspension of
Speaker 1: their license, but the court took Dr Barrwin's sterling career
Speaker 1: into account, his pro choice advocacy, his groundbreaking work in
Speaker 1: reconstructive surgery for transgender people, and his many awards. All
Speaker 1: these mitigating factors saved him from losing his medical license,
Speaker 1: but they did not save him from attracting greater scrutiny
Speaker 1: from Canadian journalists. In the wake of his sentencing, The
Speaker 1: Star published a deep dive into the doctor. The title
Speaker 1: of their article is one of my favorite titles in
Speaker 1: journalism history, Wrong Sperm, Dr Barrwin took Shortcuts and career
Speaker 1: and racist too Wow races. Yeah. Yeah. The reporters the
Speaker 1: Star revealed that Dr Barwin was also an inveterate marathon cheater,
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk more about in a little Why.
Speaker 1: I just my jaw dropped, because that's just like why,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. Yeah, that's not one to cheat
Speaker 1: on You're just like, yeah, anyone can cheating, is not
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. I think it all makes sense when we
Speaker 1: get through the rest of this guy's backstory because it
Speaker 1: all it all seems actually kind of pretty much in
Speaker 1: line to me. But yeah, it's it's quite a title.
Speaker 1: What do they call him? Wrong sperm doctor? That is
Speaker 1: a good I mean, if you're gonna go with baby
Speaker 1: God for a while, I think wrong sperm doctor is
Speaker 1: fitting when they figure you out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 1: love thinking of the editorial meeting where they're like, how
Speaker 1: do we get across that this is a doctor who
Speaker 1: put the wrong sperm in people? In the fewest words possible,
Speaker 1: what about wrong sperm doctor? And they all laughed and
Speaker 1: then they were like, let's do it. Yeah, it's Canada
Speaker 1: up there now, Billy Wayne. You know what's as good
Speaker 1: as calling Dr Barrwin the wrong sperm doctor? This transition
Speaker 1: to ads, it was smooth. I was like, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: is this silk? Are we on silk right now? You
Speaker 1: barely noticed it, didn't You almost slid right by? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I thought we were still talking. Slid right by like
Speaker 1: one of the baby gods babies sliding out of a
Speaker 1: birth canal. Say you still don't what you wanted? Yep,
Speaker 1: I did? I think that should have been You'll get
Speaker 1: you might not get what you want, but you'll get
Speaker 1: what you want. And speaking of getting what you want
Speaker 1: products and we're back. That started out as a rough
Speaker 1: transition to ads, but I think I think we found
Speaker 1: the right transition to right. It felt right, It felt right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, Hey, you don't always get the
Speaker 1: baby be you'd planned to have, but you always get
Speaker 1: the baby you're supposed to have, the you're supposed to have,
Speaker 1: unless your baby's hitler. Then you know. I still think
Speaker 1: that there was a couple that was the baby they
Speaker 1: were supposed to have them. Yep, that's how destiny works,
Speaker 1: I think so. Um. Yeah, So, reporters with the Star
Speaker 1: found out that Dr Barwin was a marathon cheater, which yeah, again,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to it a little bit. They also
Speaker 1: found out that, despite being a professor of gynecology uh
Speaker 1: and a practicing gynecologist, Dr Barwin was not in fact
Speaker 1: a gynecologist. Uh yeah, or at least he was not
Speaker 1: a Canadian gynecologist. He had been a gynecologist in Northern
Speaker 1: Ireland and when he'd moved to Canada, his employer had
Speaker 1: let him do the job with the understanding that in
Speaker 1: three years he would need to take the gynecology exam
Speaker 1: for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
Speaker 1: Dr Barwin did take that test several times, but he
Speaker 1: repeatedly failed it. He maintained his status as a general physician,
Speaker 1: but that was it now. Somehow, in spite of this,
Speaker 1: he was made the director of the High Risk Pregnancy
Speaker 1: Clinic and the co director of the Fertility Clinic, and
Speaker 1: he was allowed to teach other people how to be gynecologists.
Speaker 1: Um rude Canada follow up a question, I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: Are you don't be rude? I'm sorry. I'm sorry he
Speaker 1: failed this test. Should we tell him he can't work?
Speaker 1: Is again ecologist anymore? Just go to the Tim Horton's Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so, I'm gonna quote again from the Star. Attempting
Speaker 1: to explain how this happened. Questioned long afterwards by the
Speaker 1: Ottawa Citizen, Barwin it first claimed he left Ottawa General
Speaker 1: because he wanted more freedom than implied resentment among professional colleagues,
Speaker 1: and finally asserted that he had nothing to prove because
Speaker 1: he'd been certified by the Royal College of Obstetrics and
Speaker 1: Gynecologists in England. He did indicate embarrassment over the controversy.
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of it. I ain't got nothing improve,
Speaker 1: I ain't got nothing to prove. I ain't taking your test.
Speaker 1: I ain't trying to prove I'm a doctor. Well, you
Speaker 1: said you're a doctor, and you didn't say you could
Speaker 1: do this job, and then failed the tests that we've
Speaker 1: set to make sure people could do this job. Now
Speaker 1: that you have nothing to prove, you can't prove it.
Speaker 1: I tried using that line the last time I failed
Speaker 1: a driver's license test. It did not work. Um, but
Speaker 1: I ain't trying to prove you people I've never made.
Speaker 1: I can't drive a car, or can drive a car.
Speaker 1: I ain't what I'm trying to do, you asked the
Speaker 1: homeless man embedded in the grill of my truck. If
Speaker 1: I can drive, he'll tell you. I knows how. First
Speaker 1: of all, I don't think it's any of your business
Speaker 1: if I'm drunk or not. Right now, that's not your bid.
Speaker 1: I got nothing to prove. I ain't anything proved. Now
Speaker 1: give me my picture car. Oh all right now, Billy,
Speaker 1: are you ready to talk about Dr Barwin's marathon cheating? Yes,
Speaker 1: I that was that. I don't know why piques my
Speaker 1: interest more than the making babies. He's not supposed to
Speaker 1: because because I feel like that's just most of professional athletes. Well,
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand, doctor but not a guy
Speaker 1: in ecologist Barwin ran the Boston Marathon, and he pulled
Speaker 1: down a pretty incredible time three hours and seventeen minutes.
Speaker 1: That put him at Yeah, that's a good ass time. Now,
Speaker 1: that put him at number fourteen in the sixty to
Speaker 1: sixty nine age group. And for some reference to people
Speaker 1: who aren't runners, a three hour and seventeen minute marathon
Speaker 1: would be fucking good if you were twenty like that,
Speaker 1: that's a great time for a healthy young person that
Speaker 1: runs a lot. His time at the Victoria Marathon in
Speaker 1: British Columbia, which had qualified him for the Boston Marathon,
Speaker 1: had been even better. He'd managed it in less than
Speaker 1: three hours. But it's that is insane. Would be incredible
Speaker 1: if he had actually gotten either of those times to see.
Speaker 1: The Boston Marathon doesn't just take people's word for their time.
Speaker 1: It monitors runners with cameras, referees, computer timing equipment, and
Speaker 1: microchips attached to the shoes of runners, and when race
Speaker 1: officials looked into Dr Barwin's time, they found a couple
Speaker 1: of issues. Glenn McGregor, a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen,
Speaker 1: who dug into Barwin, managed to dig up a letter
Speaker 1: the director of the marathon had sent Barwin three days
Speaker 1: after the race, quote, you failed to appear at multiple
Speaker 1: checkpoints along the marathon route. Please provide this office with
Speaker 1: any information that may be helpful to assist in authenticating
Speaker 1: that you did run the entire marathon course, including type
Speaker 1: of clothing worn, other visual identification, split times, companion runners,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Dr Barwin had, of course, nothing to back
Speaker 1: up his claims he was disqualified. He will tell you
Speaker 1: exactly where. Uh. He was disqualified and banned forever from
Speaker 1: the Boston Marathon. A month later, when McGregor questioned him
Speaker 1: about this, initial response, his answer was quote I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure now what happened, whether I had a faulty
Speaker 1: chip or what. But later, according to the Star quote,
Speaker 1: he changed his story, admitting he dropped out around the
Speaker 1: tin k point because of an inguinial hernia, jumping back
Speaker 1: in at the end because he wanted to experience the
Speaker 1: exhilaration of crossing the finished level group of friends. I
Speaker 1: thought i'd feel the high of coming in. I got
Speaker 1: a friend to give me a lift to the finish.
Speaker 1: Barwin told the paper, I have a hard time with this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't my intent to do this. It was a
Speaker 1: breaking point, you know. Yeah, it's a breaking point. Yeah. Man, Hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta I want to feel like wants it feel
Speaker 1: like a win. Like now you should get nothing nothing
Speaker 1: to do out of your side right now. Man. No,
Speaker 1: So you're a doctor, so the gynecologist. Okay, okay, best
Speaker 1: gynecologist in Canada. Now let me see that vagina and
Speaker 1: he just like lifts up a woman's name. So The
Speaker 1: Ottawa Citizen doug further and found that Dr Barwin had
Speaker 1: also cheated at a local marathon in Ottawa. He'd finished
Speaker 1: first in his age group at just over three hours,
Speaker 1: but later digging found that he'd never finished the second
Speaker 1: lap of the race. When pressed on this, Barwin again
Speaker 1: blamed his hernia, claimed he'd limped out of the race,
Speaker 1: and assumed they'd have recorded him as quitting, even though
Speaker 1: he rejoined the race a kilometer away from the finish line.
Speaker 1: It's really embarrassing for me. It was quite out of character.
Speaker 1: I promise you. Yeah, getting caught that is not in
Speaker 1: my character. I cheat. I am not used to getting caught,
Speaker 1: and I am embarrassed right now now. Unfortunately for Dr Barwin,
Speaker 1: this is the part of the story where he starts
Speaker 1: getting caught at stuff besides Marathon cheese. I think so, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I know anything about her, because I feel like
Speaker 1: the whole time, she's like, did you cheat again? Cheat again?
Speaker 1: He's like, I beat three hours. She's like, you keep cheating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's the kind of guy that would like come back
Speaker 1: from a football game with a stolen trophy and been like,
Speaker 1: look at me, I'm a running back. I won the
Speaker 1: football game today. She's like, you're sixty one years old.
Speaker 1: So I played for the Argonaze played for the Toronto
Speaker 1: Organ Now. Dr Barwin maintained his medical license for another
Speaker 1: year after that two case where he got suspended for
Speaker 1: two months. But now that his name was in the
Speaker 1: news for mixing up sperm, other Barwin babies and their
Speaker 1: parents started getting DNA tests to see if they were
Speaker 1: who they thought they were. Yeah, this became a problem
Speaker 1: very quickly. One Barwin baby eventually began to suspect that
Speaker 1: the doctor himself was her biological father after a DNA
Speaker 1: test showed she was not genetically related to the man
Speaker 1: who had raised her. According to NBC quote, Barwin confirmed
Speaker 1: through a DNA test that he was her father, but
Speaker 1: said the only occasion he had used his own seamen
Speaker 1: was when he was calibrating an automatic sperm counter, and
Speaker 1: some of it must have become mixed up with donor sperm.
Speaker 1: Oh man, come on, dude, you're buying that billy God.
Speaker 1: I was cleaning it and it went I was cleaning
Speaker 1: mind and it went off. And that's what that's how,
Speaker 1: that's how you got here. I must have shot it
Speaker 1: into the the crop pot of other jizz in my laboratory.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't have kept him all in the same bowl. I mean,
Speaker 1: it isn't hanging like when you confront somebody like that.
Speaker 1: You everyone expects like that moment when you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: I got you, and they're gonna be like, Okay, you
Speaker 1: got me. But that never happens with people like this.
Speaker 1: They're always like no. Probably what happened was like a
Speaker 1: bird came and took some of my jazz and put
Speaker 1: it in the US and then we had a bird problem.
Speaker 1: And you're just like I can't even this is god
Speaker 1: damn it. Yes, that's all you can say is just
Speaker 1: God damn And he's like, goddamn it, there's fucking birds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. So, uh, that lie, if it ever was believable,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that it was crumbled immediately under
Speaker 1: a flood of new victims. One of these was a
Speaker 1: patient who had given birth in ninete to a daughter.
Speaker 1: She thought she that Dr Barwin had used her husband sperm,
Speaker 1: but then her daughter wound up with Celiac disease, a
Speaker 1: genetic condition neither parents shared. Dr Barwin resigned his medical
Speaker 1: license and shame in two thousand fourteen, but people continued
Speaker 1: to come forward. One of those people was a young
Speaker 1: woman with the last name of Palmer. Her journey started
Speaker 1: with the DNA test she took for an online registry.
Speaker 1: She knew she'd been the product of a sperm donor,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to know if she had any relations
Speaker 1: in the area. To her surprise, she had one, a
Speaker 1: second cousin who just so happened to be related to
Speaker 1: Dr Barwin, the futility doctor who had artificially inseminated her mother.
Speaker 1: Palmer set to work trying to unravel this mystery. At
Speaker 1: one point, she confronted Dr Barwin, who informed her that
Speaker 1: Alas he'd lost the donor registry and there was no
Speaker 1: way to figure out who her biological father was. Oops,
Speaker 1: it was me. It was me. But oops, we don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know it was me. We don't have any
Speaker 1: proof to it must have went down the that fucking
Speaker 1: bird dropped it into the jiz bucket. Now, now all
Speaker 1: the inks run off, and I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: the Ottawa Citizen. I don't know how this happened, she
Speaker 1: recounts Barwin telling her, and what would have become a
Speaker 1: familiar refrain, the fertility doctor had something else to say
Speaker 1: to Palmer. He told me, I was Sessa for wanting
Speaker 1: the answer. You are young, You are in a healthy relationship.
Speaker 1: Isn't that enough for you? He asked, That's such a dick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Palmer says she tried to Yeah, what you're here? What
Speaker 1: you're here? You got a boyfriend? Why do you care?
Speaker 1: Who sperm made you? Shut up? Now? Palmer says she
Speaker 1: tried to be cordial as possible to keep a line
Speaker 1: of communication open. Inside, she says she was seething with
Speaker 1: rage at the roadblocks. Dr Barrwin's clinic seemed to be
Speaker 1: putting up to prevent her from getting more information about herself.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine you, like at one point, no daughter
Speaker 1: of mine's going to talk to me likely this, and
Speaker 1: you're just like damn. I was trying to get into
Speaker 1: his head that this isn't a ridiculous question. You are
Speaker 1: not breeding puppies, you are creating humans. This seems really
Speaker 1: reasonable like Palmer eventually grew convinced that her sperm donor
Speaker 1: had either been Dr Barwin or someone close to him.
Speaker 1: She did eventually get him to take a DNA test
Speaker 1: that confirmed he was her father. Dr Barrwin insisted this
Speaker 1: had all been the result of some tremendous, terrible funk up.
Speaker 1: In a two thift email, he wrote her this quote,
Speaker 1: I cannot understand how this could have happened. This has
Speaker 1: caused me much stress and remorse. I regret that we
Speaker 1: both have had to endure this major disruption. Special me
Speaker 1: illegal or me act me purposefully using my own sperm
Speaker 1: instead of your biologic or you're the guy who raised
Speaker 1: you sperm to make you is a problem for both
Speaker 1: of us, and I would have gotten away with it
Speaker 1: too if it wasn't for rome A Midling kids. That's
Speaker 1: the antitude he has with all of it, is like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? No, yeah, and none of it, And
Speaker 1: you guys are mad at me. I don't understand exist.
Speaker 1: Some of you are dating people. Come on, it sounds
Speaker 1: like some of you are coming to what's the problem. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: he begged Palmer not to tell anybody, and for a
Speaker 1: while she did keep this a secret, but doing so
Speaker 1: aided her, and in two thousand sixteen, she sent Dr
Speaker 1: Barwin this email quote, First, let me make clear what
Speaker 1: I don't expect. I don't expect to suddenly be part
Speaker 1: of the Barwin family, nor do I want to be.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't expect any money or other forms of inheritance.
Speaker 1: What I want is much simpler than that. I don't
Speaker 1: want to feel the burden of hiding who I am,
Speaker 1: the fullness of who I am. I expect his children
Speaker 1: and grandchildren to know I exist, that I am connected
Speaker 1: to them in this slightly confusing way, and that the
Speaker 1: relationship is not my fault. It's not some threat from
Speaker 1: an outsider. I was just born, and the nature of
Speaker 1: my birth and my genetic relationship to them is entirely
Speaker 1: from choices or mistakes that others made, totally reasonable. All
Speaker 1: of that is insanely reasonable, considering the circumstances and what
Speaker 1: has happened. That might be the most reasonable paragraph that's
Speaker 1: ever been read on this show. Without that I've heard,
Speaker 1: without a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt, that's the most
Speaker 1: reasonable human thing we've heard. And it was just like,
Speaker 1: listen what you did. I don't want anything from you.
Speaker 1: I just need to be able to acknowledge who I
Speaker 1: am as a human person. And he's like, hey, easy.
Speaker 1: We think about his response. No, no, now it makes
Speaker 1: me want to jump out the window already, Like when
Speaker 1: you said, here's his response, I'm already like I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I don't know well, and the window next
Speaker 1: to you is the poison room, so that would be
Speaker 1: doubly dangerous. Be dead. And then all yet, and then
Speaker 1: we'll make sure I'm taking Barwin's response is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to read now, so if it makes sure the
Speaker 1: poison room doors locked. I am concerned that if this
Speaker 1: becomes public, my professional credibility will be damaged. I am
Speaker 1: so sorry that my issue. I am so sorry that
Speaker 1: my issues are causing such an impact on you. It's
Speaker 1: not that I don't want to let my children know
Speaker 1: about you. It's just that I am worried about how
Speaker 1: they will feel about me. If you plan to inform others.
Speaker 1: My concerned is he's such a piece of ship. God,
Speaker 1: I mean a clinical psychologists like tell him to come
Speaker 1: say me, holy shit. I feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: the I'm not a psychologist, but I feel like the
Speaker 1: ethical response if he went to a clinical psychologist would
Speaker 1: be for that psychologist to hit him in the face. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're the case. Come here. That's that's the one case
Speaker 1: in the d s M. Like they line this out
Speaker 1: years ago. Nobody's ever done it. No, it says here,
Speaker 1: you're the only type of person I can punch. I
Speaker 1: have to counsel serial killers, but you I can hit.
Speaker 1: I get to punch, you get to punch it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not done reading his response. M. If you plan
Speaker 1: to inform others, my concern is how they will see me. Again,
Speaker 1: it is not about you. You have been very understanding, reasonable, impatient,
Speaker 1: and from what I can gather, you are a fabulous person.
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know why I have been delaying.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to come to terms with what I
Speaker 1: have done and how my family will feel about me
Speaker 1: if they were aware of my unintentional action. See, it's
Speaker 1: not about you. The issue of who your father is
Speaker 1: is not about you. It's about me, the guy who
Speaker 1: conned your mother into getting my come inside here. Well,
Speaker 1: and and he doesn't even say that he doesn't even know,
Speaker 1: he's not even that honest. He says that the my
Speaker 1: unintentional action, which is still like no, dude, no dude,
Speaker 1: you can't start it with me, and like you're gonna
Speaker 1: funk up my doctor thing. You're not thinking about me
Speaker 1: or me or may here. And then also, I didn't
Speaker 1: do this, it was an accident. We're like, well, none
Speaker 1: of what you said, none of it. It's like, even
Speaker 1: if you're worried about your doctor's thing, then you admit
Speaker 1: that you're not a good doctor in the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating now, I mean sure, I mean before
Speaker 1: we read that, I was like, well, this guy's obvious
Speaker 1: the narcissist where he's just like I wanna everyone from
Speaker 1: taking my seed. And then he can't even respond without
Speaker 1: being like, you're not even thinking about me. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's Wow. Yeah, this guy is a hardcore narcissist. And
Speaker 1: by two thousand nineteen, it was clear that Dr Barwin
Speaker 1: had been responsible for mixing up the sperm donors between
Speaker 1: fifty one and a hundred babies, and quite possibly many
Speaker 1: many more. For sure. Yeah, because there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids like you went to that doctor. Fuck, I don't
Speaker 1: want you. You know what, you shouldn't read up on it. Now.
Speaker 1: It was also shown that he had been the donor
Speaker 1: himself for at least eleven of those babies. More more, way, more, more,
Speaker 1: way more. I'm I'm if I had money to bet
Speaker 1: for on this, this would be like, yeah, there's more.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more Barwin babies who were literal Barwin babies. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point it became clear that whatever had gone
Speaker 1: down was no accident. Dr Barwin had purposefully impregnated women
Speaker 1: with his sperm against their will. Now, Billy, in a
Speaker 1: reasonable world, would you consider would you think that would
Speaker 1: be a crime. It sounds I mean, by definition, it
Speaker 1: sounds like, right, yeah, it's not rape. But it lives
Speaker 1: in the same housing development. Okay, I understand it. It's
Speaker 1: the same shitty gated community. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: same shitty gated community is um you know what's not
Speaker 1: in the same gated community as rate Billy Wayne Davis
Speaker 1: hopefully Hope Koke Brother that Yeah. I mean actually if
Speaker 1: it's if it's a Koke Brother's ad, it might be
Speaker 1: in that ballpark they built the gated community. That they
Speaker 1: built the gated community, and they built it above a
Speaker 1: leaky gas pipeline on a Native American reservation. Anyway, Thus
Speaker 1: begins are most smoothly led into ad break of all
Speaker 1: time products. Nice job, We're back. Yes, uh so, as
Speaker 1: I kind of animated in the before the lead out,
Speaker 1: this was not against the law. Um, nothing exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Nobody thought this would happen. I think all of the
Speaker 1: assemblies look at each other like, I mean it should
Speaker 1: be but yeah, ship, yeah, I haven't had this issue before.
Speaker 1: It's like committing tax fraud in space, Like nobody quite
Speaker 1: thought to like make sure that that was down in
Speaker 1: the books. Yes, yes, he international waters the ship out
Speaker 1: of that, didn't you. Yeah. Now. The only official come
Speaker 1: up and that Dr Barwin suffered was a disciplinary panel
Speaker 1: from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Dr
Speaker 1: Barwin did not show up at his own hearing, denying
Speaker 1: his victims a chance to get any kind of closure.
Speaker 1: He just showed up at the end, right, No, he
Speaker 1: didn't even show up. And just to think that that's
Speaker 1: what he like, he started the hearing and then left
Speaker 1: and then showed up right before it ended. That would
Speaker 1: be true to form. I just wanted to feel like
Speaker 1: what the Simonson was, That's all. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: feel it. I wanted to feel the feeling of being
Speaker 1: sent I just wanted to feel it. Yeah. I had
Speaker 1: a hernie, Yeah, like HERNI and UT was like, is
Speaker 1: he doing the marathon? Is THEO thinkking? He now? Dr
Speaker 1: Barwin claimed that he could not make the hearing due
Speaker 1: to unspecified medical issues, which he provided no evidence for
Speaker 1: uh and his doctor pleaded or his lawyer pleaded no contest,
Speaker 1: which meant that he did not dispute the facts of
Speaker 1: the case, but also did not admit guilt. It's basically like,
Speaker 1: how can I give the people I wronged the least
Speaker 1: amount of closure? That's what he did. Yeah. Now, there
Speaker 1: is currently a class action lawsuit against Dr Barwin in
Speaker 1: the offing, and if it actually goes through, Dr Barwin
Speaker 1: might wind up in a court. But even so, there
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be any chance of him actually facing
Speaker 1: serious criminal penalties for his actions. See It turns out
Speaker 1: that assisted human reproduction as an industry is kind of
Speaker 1: preposterous lee unregulated pretty much everywhere on Earth. In Canada,
Speaker 1: the organization respond for be keeping an eye on the
Speaker 1: practice is Assisted Human Reproduction Canada, a federal regulatory body
Speaker 1: established in two thousand six. They are supposed to keep
Speaker 1: track of donor conceived kids and make sure people like
Speaker 1: Dr Barwin don't get to impregnate numerous women in secret.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand eight, two years after the organization's founding,
Speaker 1: the Province of Quebec challenged the federal government's jurisdiction. The
Speaker 1: case spent years meyern in the Canadian Supreme Court, and
Speaker 1: during that time Health Canada was unable to actually develop
Speaker 1: any regulations. In two thousand twelve, the agency was defunded
Speaker 1: and responsibility for regulating fertility clinics was returned to the States.
Speaker 1: So there's barely anyone keeping watch, and up until recently
Speaker 1: there were barely any laws in Canada, certainly none aimed
Speaker 1: at stopping someone like Normwin Barwin from using his own
Speaker 1: sperm on donors. And this is not just a Canadian problem. Basically,
Speaker 1: everywhere the fertility industry exists, it does so with almost
Speaker 1: no regulation or oversight. The executive director for the Center
Speaker 1: for Genetics and Society called the United States the wild
Speaker 1: West of the utility industry. It was huge news in
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen when Utah, of all places, passed a
Speaker 1: law giving donor conceived children the right to know their
Speaker 1: genetic parents medical history. Like crazy that Utah would actually
Speaker 1: be the first to like the state that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can sell people lead and call it a vitamin
Speaker 1: that if you have four, you can do that if
Speaker 1: you got four. Um. Now, Utah is kind of unique
Speaker 1: in passing this law because most states don't regulate even
Speaker 1: like don't even regulate how many children can be conceived
Speaker 1: by a single donor. Like though that Utah did it
Speaker 1: for some fat channel Mormon genetic thing where they're making
Speaker 1: sure if I, if I was a better researcher, I
Speaker 1: would have checked in on that. I was just happy
Speaker 1: to see that somebody had instituted that law in the
Speaker 1: United States and shocked that it was Utah. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why it was Utah, and I don't It might
Speaker 1: just be Mormons, but it's just they're just that the
Speaker 1: way they do government there is very interesting. So I
Speaker 1: mean it might just be that, like because uh, there's
Speaker 1: so many large families in Utah, the fertility industry is
Speaker 1: bigger there and so they needed to start regulating it
Speaker 1: earlier than other places. I really don't know. I think
Speaker 1: you said it more articularly than where it was just like,
Speaker 1: do you think it's weird Mormon shit? You know it's
Speaker 1: got to be weird Mormons. It's Utah, right, like everything traces. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't get you gotta mix your liquor behind a curtain,
Speaker 1: but you can know who your biological father was. Confusing. Uh,
Speaker 1: Now this is where we leave Dr Barwin. What I
Speaker 1: found in my research is that he isn't so much
Speaker 1: a bastard as one member of a species of bastards.
Speaker 1: And this brings me to the story of Dr Donald Klein.
Speaker 1: He was an Indianapolis era fertility doctor in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and nineteen eighties, the same wild and wooly days
Speaker 1: that Dr Barwin started practicing. You want to guess where
Speaker 1: this story goes, Billy Way, No, no, you know what
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm gonna quote from the New York Times
Speaker 1: here quote. Many couples sawt Dr Klein out at his
Speaker 1: Indianapolis Air of Fertility clinic during the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: They had children who grew up and had children of
Speaker 1: their own with the couples did not know was that
Speaker 1: an untold number of occasions Dr Klein was not using
Speaker 1: the sperm of anonymous donors. He was using his own.
Speaker 1: Through twenty three and Me and other similar genetic testing websites,
Speaker 1: three dozen half siblings of those women have been found
Speaker 1: three dozen. About three dozen, said Jacoba Ballard, thirty eight,
Speaker 1: one of the biological daughters. She expects the number to grow.
Speaker 1: In some instances, State prosecutors said Dr Klein even told
Speaker 1: women that he was using their husband's sperm but provided
Speaker 1: his own. What is the thought? Is it that doctor
Speaker 1: thing that they get where they're like, I am, is
Speaker 1: it some weird I think it's narcissism. And I'll ask you, well,
Speaker 1: hold onto that thought, because once we get a little
Speaker 1: bit more information, I think we can discuss this in detail,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a pretty clear conclusion here. Um.
Speaker 1: But I want to go through the other cases. So
Speaker 1: there's like there's like a like you said, a species
Speaker 1: of man that it's like, yeah, it's a whole type
Speaker 1: of guy. Wow. Yeah don special certainly not Dr Norman Barwin.
Speaker 1: Even if you think, hey, I'm just secretly impregnating all
Speaker 1: these women, I am. No one else is doing this
Speaker 1: ship there's like four other people. Yeah I'm doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like yeah, I mean I've had to deal with
Speaker 1: that feeling just because of the existence of the dollar,
Speaker 1: and it's nice to know that that's true with doctors
Speaker 1: who use their own sperm as well. Yes, yes, where
Speaker 1: you go to an audition and everyone looks like you
Speaker 1: and you're like what you fuck? Yeah, that's really Uh.
Speaker 1: That's one of the things about Los Angeles that can
Speaker 1: drive you crazy is how he said you could be
Speaker 1: sorted into a type yeah, or or you go down
Speaker 1: aunditions like I went to one where it was written
Speaker 1: for me like I was the guy, Like they were like,
Speaker 1: we want Billy Wayne Davis, and then I went and
Speaker 1: I didn't get it because someone did it better than me.
Speaker 1: He was better Billy Wayne Davis than you, And I
Speaker 1: was like he probably was. He probably was. They had
Speaker 1: their look or whatever whatever company was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: he's better than the real one. I mean we actually
Speaker 1: we were planning to have you on the show a
Speaker 1: lot earlier, Billy Wayne, but you know, you kind of
Speaker 1: flubbed the audition. And I have to say, Jamie, it
Speaker 1: was a great Billy Wayne Davis. Yeah, she's uh so.
Speaker 1: Dr Klein is still alive, but his refused doggedly to
Speaker 1: address any of this or to explain himself to his victims.
Speaker 1: In December of two thousand eighteen, he played guilty to
Speaker 1: two felony counts of obstruction of justice and was given
Speaker 1: a suspended three hundred and sixty five days sentence. Now,
Speaker 1: the only reason he received that much of a punishment,
Speaker 1: and any kind of criminal punishment at all, was because
Speaker 1: he lied to state investigators when he initially claimed he
Speaker 1: hadn't used his own sperm to impregnate anyone. The fact
Speaker 1: that he had tricked a bunch of women into burying
Speaker 1: his genetic material was not a crime. Now, if he
Speaker 1: wouldn't admitted to it would be fine. He probably would
Speaker 1: have lost his medical license like that that stuff they
Speaker 1: can do for it, But he wouldn't have gone. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't have gotten a criminal sentence, yeah what, but would
Speaker 1: it would have put him in like civil Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you can sue people civilly for anything, and
Speaker 1: I think he's certainly at risk for that because he definitely,
Speaker 1: like you can claim material harm for what he did,
Speaker 1: because the ego of like not admitting it when you're
Speaker 1: doing it, because I think they want it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a thing you're like. I think part of them,
Speaker 1: like someone was like, hey, you can't admit you did
Speaker 1: this because you will have zero money ever again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's the case. Um. Now, the state medical board
Speaker 1: did bar him from holding a medical license again, but
Speaker 1: since Dr Klein had retired in two thousand nine, this
Speaker 1: isn't an enormous punishment. We have no way of knowing
Speaker 1: how many of his genetic children are out there. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: those children have no way of knowing who their biological
Speaker 1: father was because Dr Klein shredded all of his patient records.
Speaker 1: Cool cool dude. In nineteen ninety two, in Virginia, a
Speaker 1: fertility doctor named Cecil Jacobsen was indicted for using his
Speaker 1: own sperm to impregnate dozens of women. Now, it was
Speaker 1: illegal in Virginia. So Virginias, you can take some pride
Speaker 1: in the fact that your state is way ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve on this. He was sentenced to five years
Speaker 1: in prison and more than a hundred and sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in fines, but even so it still took decades
Speaker 1: and more than fifty pregnancies for anyone to catch him. Now,
Speaker 1: Jacobsen was a Brown University graduate who went on to
Speaker 1: be the chief of reproductive genetics at George Washington University.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, he claimed to have successfully implanted
Speaker 1: a fertilized baboon egg into a male baboon and kept
Speaker 1: the pregnancy viable for nearly four months. He never published
Speaker 1: to this work, and he's probably lying about it, but
Speaker 1: the fact that he considered this something to brag about
Speaker 1: probably should have been a red flag decades earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from a medical bag dot com
Speaker 1: article on the man quote. By the nineteen eighties, Jacobson
Speaker 1: had started operating a genetic center in Virginia. He proclaimed
Speaker 1: himself a fertility specialist and began treating patients who had
Speaker 1: difficulties getting pregnant. He used the hormone human chorionic gonado
Speaker 1: gonado trope him hCG regularly, and as a form of treatment,
Speaker 1: Jacobson would falsify pregnancies, have patients undergo ultrasounds, and then
Speaker 1: tell them that the fetus had died. Around the third
Speaker 1: month of pregnancy, suspicions began to arise, which reported to
Speaker 1: local authorities. Federal investigators stepped in and came to find that,
Speaker 1: in addition to the falsified pregnancies, Jacobson had been artificially
Speaker 1: inseminating patients with sperm, supposedly from screen and anonymous donors.
Speaker 1: The investigators determined that there was no donor program and
Speaker 1: that Jacobson was using his own sperm to impregnate patients. Program. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a program program Jacobson. Uh. It's suspected that in total,
Speaker 1: Jacobson probably fathered as many as seventy five children with
Speaker 1: his own seamen. But okay, there's another part of this
Speaker 1: where it's like you're not actually getting laid either. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it.
Speaker 1: I know it's not it. But it is like a
Speaker 1: fun part of making a baby. It is the better
Speaker 1: part of making It's way better than like you know,
Speaker 1: glass and then putting in the thing and maybe yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, when they turn out to be
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton, but yeah, all of those other parts sucked
Speaker 1: to now. There are many fertility doctors with stories like this.
Speaker 1: On August two thousand, nineteen, two days before I wrote
Speaker 1: this script, Today Magazine published an article titled their Mothers
Speaker 1: chose donor sperm, their doctor's used their own. It tells
Speaker 1: the story of Eve Whiley, who learned at age sixteen
Speaker 1: that she'd been conceived via artificial insemination. The doctor responsible,
Speaker 1: Kim mcmoury's, told her mother that he'd found said sperm
Speaker 1: through a California sperm bank and believe this to be
Speaker 1: true until she took a consumer DNA test. You've told
Speaker 1: reporters you build your whole life on your genetic identity,
Speaker 1: and that's the foundation. But when those bottom bricks have
Speaker 1: been removed or altered, it can be devastating. I I
Speaker 1: will say in the future, I'm going to use California
Speaker 1: Sperm Bank as a pseudonym from my testicles, but I
Speaker 1: think only when I'm in California like that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got it from California Sperm Bank. You can be sure
Speaker 1: of that. And I like that a lot of this
Speaker 1: was discovered with the with the commercial commercialization of DNA testing.
Speaker 1: Like the doctors are like walking to a CVS the
Speaker 1: first time they saw like a DNA test thing and
Speaker 1: they're like, this is not good. This ain't gonna work
Speaker 1: well for me like that. Do you know, now, dr?
Speaker 1: What do you think of this twenty three and me stuff?
Speaker 1: It's a scam. It's a scam. It's bad And the
Speaker 1: best part is it is kind of a scam. This
Speaker 1: is basically the only thing it was be good for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in helping catch murderers. I think, I think for
Speaker 1: yeah stuff, it's a lot of problematic aspects, but in
Speaker 1: this case it did a good thing. Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you think of twenty three and Well? I discover that
Speaker 1: my dad is a doctor that is also the data
Speaker 1: send me for other people that we know about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't hear that commercial on the park? I found
Speaker 1: out my family comes from Norway. Now, partly as a
Speaker 1: result of Eve's case, Texas has passed a law making
Speaker 1: this sort of thing a crime. It is now defined
Speaker 1: as sexual assault there So, in this one case, Texas
Speaker 1: is actually an example of like a reasonable and timely
Speaker 1: response to a clear problem. So it happened once in
Speaker 1: Texas state history. Good for them, Good, good for them.
Speaker 1: We should get Texas. You get a lot of ship
Speaker 1: and deservedly so, and deservedly so, you deserve it. But hey,
Speaker 1: good job on this one. On this one. Nailed it,
Speaker 1: don't you nailed it? Yeah, don't get you nailed it?
Speaker 1: Like the biological pair or like the people who raised
Speaker 1: all these kids? Uh did not nail there. You know
Speaker 1: you could see where the joke I was trying to
Speaker 1: go for there was. Yeah, it just didn't work out.
Speaker 1: See why you chose journalism. But I I do think
Speaker 1: like yeah, like and even with the Canada thing or
Speaker 1: the Mormon thing, it's like, I do feel like there's
Speaker 1: probably livestock. There's a livestock reason somewhere involved in while
Speaker 1: they're ahead of this, somebody reads this story about people
Speaker 1: and it's like, my god, this is going to infect
Speaker 1: the steers. Yes, that's industry, that's our industry here. It's like, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I do think there's probably something because like that's how
Speaker 1: I know about artificial insemination is because I was raising
Speaker 1: cattle farm and it's not as complicated a process as
Speaker 1: people would think it is. No, no, it is not.
Speaker 1: It is not. Although I think people would be interested
Speaker 1: at the lengths that are gone to to stop bowls
Speaker 1: from actually having sex with anything. Yes, yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: an entertaining part of that, and it's yeah, they get
Speaker 1: them all worked up and then they're like, hey, how
Speaker 1: we're gonna stop and record. There's a lot of like
Speaker 1: in the meat industry, there's a lot of like, uh,
Speaker 1: things to be angry about in terms of an injustice,
Speaker 1: but that should be on the list. Yes, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not as bad as like keeping animals in their own
Speaker 1: fecal matter outside of sunlight and stuff in a cramped pin.
Speaker 1: But it's still not cool me. They don't want those
Speaker 1: dudes on Yeah, they are on re sons of bitches
Speaker 1: and they're just like, oh, you're mad because that dudes
Speaker 1: on you. No, No, I don't care. He's on my back.
Speaker 1: They haven't let me fuck you know, why don't you?
Speaker 1: For an idea of like the environment I grew up in,
Speaker 1: my mom's favorite sport to watch was bull riding, primarily
Speaker 1: for when the guys would get horribly injured. Of watching
Speaker 1: those guys get fucked up by both. It's awesome. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: It is awesome. That's what you And it's like when
Speaker 1: that's one the whole problem with the NFL not coming forward,
Speaker 1: just say it causes brain damage, and then they sign
Speaker 1: a waiver and you get to make a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: We know, guns kill people and it's a huge industry
Speaker 1: in the United States. If you were just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: football is horrible for people, do you still want to
Speaker 1: make a hundred million dollars? People would still say yes,
Speaker 1: I know it already and do it. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: when someone stops, like Andrew Luck and everybody's like what
Speaker 1: is he doing, He's like, well, I think he's he
Speaker 1: wants to enjoy his millions of dollars before his brain melts.
Speaker 1: He just wants to remember what life is like. Yeah, yeah, god, yeah,
Speaker 1: he knows he's got ten years left before he shoots
Speaker 1: himself in the chest and leaves a note telling doctors
Speaker 1: to study his brain. My brain because I'm a good person.
Speaker 1: But this which has happened to a bunch of those guys.
Speaker 1: Number one Junior say oh that you know about that,
Speaker 1: there's other ones that have that you don't know about.
Speaker 1: That are like this, I gotta I'm tired of being crazy. Yeah, horrible.
Speaker 1: Thank god. I went to the football practice in college.
Speaker 1: It was like, fuck this. I did play for a
Speaker 1: season in high school, but I was not good at it.
Speaker 1: Uh And I mostly avoided the head injuries. See that
Speaker 1: was pretty good at it in high school, so I
Speaker 1: could avoid the head injuries. So that was the Mine
Speaker 1: was like, I don't like hitting people, but I like
Speaker 1: score and touchdowns. I can say all my head injuries
Speaker 1: in life have come from teaching special ed. I think
Speaker 1: my dad might back that up to yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: you'll get hit in the head a lot, depending on
Speaker 1: what type of teaching football coach, especially a teacher, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's like not gonna hit way more, especially now. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Texas passed the law and making this
Speaker 1: a crime after the mcmoury's case, but Dr mcmoury's behavior
Speaker 1: remains legal in forty seven American states. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote again from today. Dr Jody Madeira, a law
Speaker 1: professor at Indiana University, is following more than twenty cases
Speaker 1: in the United States and abroad. They have occurred in
Speaker 1: a dozen states, including Connecticut, Vermont, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada,
Speaker 1: she said, as well as in England, South Africa, Germany
Speaker 1: and the Netherlands. So many doctors use their own sperm
Speaker 1: to impregnate women, so many fertility doctors. It's fucking crazy
Speaker 1: how common it is. Border It is an epidemic. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely an epidemic. Like I didn't include every case, just
Speaker 1: the most obvious ones. I only had so much research time.
Speaker 1: I can't So is it like a funny thing they're doing,
Speaker 1: like where they're like, I said, let's get through the
Speaker 1: rest of this and then we'll talk about what the
Speaker 1: funk we think is going You keep saying that, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, there's just a lot more fucking deeper than
Speaker 1: I could ever believe. So I'm like, yeah, we're almost glad,
Speaker 1: We're almost there. And then you're like, no, there's forty
Speaker 1: eight more dudes that are doing this. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: a hundred and twelve pages more to go through. That
Speaker 1: case in the Netherlands was probably fertility specialist Yawn Carbot.
Speaker 1: He was confirmed by DNA testing to a fathered fifty
Speaker 1: six children with women who distinctly did not intend to
Speaker 1: have his sperm inside of them. Carbot's clinic closed in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, but much of this activity had happened
Speaker 1: decades prior, and at least one local attorney doubted whether
Speaker 1: or not he'd ever done anything legally improper. Quote thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, people looked at things in very different ways.
Speaker 1: Carbot could have been an anonymous donor. We don't know
Speaker 1: that there was no registration system at the time. As
Speaker 1: a good lawyer right there, that is a good law
Speaker 1: good lawyer, solid lawyer. Yeah, I'm impressed, but I invited
Speaker 1: my barbecue. Yeah. Now, it's worth noting that there are
Speaker 1: reasons some doctors may have used their own sperm outside
Speaker 1: of narcissism or just some bizarre cank or I should say,
Speaker 1: in addition to narcissism, up until the late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: frozen sperm technology was still quite primitive. Many doctors might
Speaker 1: have justified using their own fresh sperm because they knew
Speaker 1: it would work better than the alternative. No one back
Speaker 1: in nineteen saw home DNA testing kits is very likely,
Speaker 1: and I think this might explain Dr Barwin's reputation as
Speaker 1: the baby god. Other fertility doctors in Ottawa probably didn't
Speaker 1: use their own semen in patients, so they relied on
Speaker 1: the frozen stuff and had lower success rates. Dr Barwin's
Speaker 1: marked success was a direct consequence of the fact that
Speaker 1: he was fine lying to people about whose semen they
Speaker 1: were getting. And this Billy Wayne Davis brings me to
Speaker 1: the story of Berthold Wisner and his wife Mary Barton.
Speaker 1: They were very first for the end, and I don't
Speaker 1: like it some of the in there. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: this is definitely part of a horror movie. They were
Speaker 1: among the earliest pioneers in the fertility field. They started
Speaker 1: a clinic in London in the nineteen forties and over
Speaker 1: the years they took part in more than fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: successful conceptions. Now, at the time they told it's that
Speaker 1: all of their sperm donors came from a small collection
Speaker 1: of their friends who were all geniuses and accomplished academics.
Speaker 1: Come in this house, Well fuck, they're all geniuses. Now
Speaker 1: you want to guess how many of these babies were his?
Speaker 1: Every one of them? No, no, it's not that bad.
Speaker 1: Roughly one third of them. So about six hundred children
Speaker 1: are estimated to have been conceived to be a Wisener sperm. Now,
Speaker 1: most of these children will probably never learn the truth
Speaker 1: since it took so many decades for anyone to realize
Speaker 1: what was going on. It's actually impossible for anyone to
Speaker 1: know how many children Wisener had or how many of
Speaker 1: those kids may have wind up dating or marrying each
Speaker 1: other and forgot about that part. That's so funny, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this this might explain a little bit of white
Speaker 1: English people are so weird. Um, but you know, no
Speaker 1: way to know it's well, there's a it's a cocktail
Speaker 1: over there now. In two thousand eighteen, a Queen's couple
Speaker 1: finally succeeded in conceiving a child through in vitro fertilization,
Speaker 1: but when the mother gave birth in March of this year,
Speaker 1: she and her husband were shocked to find out that,
Speaker 1: unlike them, their children were not Asian. According to Today
Speaker 1: dot Com, the couple reported they had spent over a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars at c H, a fertility center in California,
Speaker 1: for attempts at IVF. According to a lawsuit filed last week,
Speaker 1: red flags began to pop up throughout the pregnancy. A
Speaker 1: sonogram showed the women was carrying twin boys. If the
Speaker 1: couple had not used male embryos. When they contacted the
Speaker 1: clinic about it, doctor simply told them the sonogram was incorrect.
Speaker 1: Following the birth, the couple was shocked to see that
Speaker 1: the babies they were told were formed using both of
Speaker 1: their genetic material did not appear to be. The lawsuits
Speaker 1: stated the babies were not related to either of their
Speaker 1: parents or to each other. The couple relinquished custody of
Speaker 1: the children. Now it is unclear who the parents were
Speaker 1: in that case. We have no idea. It is entirely
Speaker 1: possible that this case is not at all the result
Speaker 1: of a shady doctor wanting to spread his seed or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It may have just been a funk
Speaker 1: up due to the fact that in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: nobody really cares about making sure this piece of the
Speaker 1: medical field of gids by the same rules that other
Speaker 1: parts of medicine that don't involve semen do. Dove Fox,
Speaker 1: a professor of law at the University of San Diego,
Speaker 1: provided this explanation to today. Fertility centers, and there are
Speaker 1: almost five hundred of them in the United States today,
Speaker 1: operate free of almost any regulation at all. Fox told
Speaker 1: NBC News there's no federal law, no state law, no
Speaker 1: enforced professional guideline that enforces requirements that licenses these facilities
Speaker 1: in the way that they label, or diagnose or handle sperm,
Speaker 1: eggs and embryos that result in the creation of people.
Speaker 1: In fertility medicine, it's very different than any other field,
Speaker 1: where we regulate very closely what's called never events. These
Speaker 1: are major avoidable mistakes, things like blood transfusion on the
Speaker 1: wrong person, or a surgery on the wrong body part
Speaker 1: or the wrong patient. There we require mandatory disclosure and
Speaker 1: we figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Speaker 1: We have nothing like that for what you might call
Speaker 1: never events in reproductive technology. So that's neat. I I mean,
Speaker 1: I might stop doing comedy and just get into Dr
Speaker 1: Billy's bag making bungle to Billy's baby clinic. They come
Speaker 1: from a California sperm bank. It sure does. He only
Speaker 1: say he can say five or six couples the day
Speaker 1: until he's about forty five, and then he's going to retire.
Speaker 1: I think, oh Jesus, so yeah. My thinking on why
Speaker 1: these guys do it. I think you've got to mix
Speaker 1: the two kinds of doctors and fertility medicine. You have
Speaker 1: good doctors who choose to go into fertility medicine and
Speaker 1: do their best, and sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: fail because using frozen sperm is harder than using fresh
Speaker 1: sperm and it's a difficult field. And then you have
Speaker 1: guys like Dr Barwin, who are not actually great doctors,
Speaker 1: but who, because they're narcissists, want to be seen as
Speaker 1: the best, and who realized at a certain point, I
Speaker 1: can be the best fertility doctor if I just use
Speaker 1: my own fresh come all the time. Yeah. No, that
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good business decision to more than
Speaker 1: any Yeah, it's a great That's why he became the
Speaker 1: baby god. Yeah. I think it's the same with most
Speaker 1: of these guys. They just wanted to be seen as great.
Speaker 1: I don't like. I don't think it's a kink for
Speaker 1: most of them. I don't think it's about wanting to
Speaker 1: spread their seed. I think they want to be seen
Speaker 1: as great doctors. And literally, the easiest way in medicine
Speaker 1: to be seen as a great doctor without actually being
Speaker 1: good at medicine is to be a cheating fertility doctor.
Speaker 1: Until recently, Yeah, well especially the marathon guy, like cheating
Speaker 1: was not that was like he was all about results.
Speaker 1: He wanted to seem like the best. Yeah, yeah he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had a I would say probably insecurity, I would say,
Speaker 1: for sure, which is a weird thing to lead to
Speaker 1: wanting more children. And I don't think he cared about that.
Speaker 1: You just think it was well And I guess you're right,
Speaker 1: because it's not even that personal. When you're in the
Speaker 1: lab doing the thing. It's probably you're just thinking about like, oh,
Speaker 1: this will make these people happy, and then I'll get
Speaker 1: more money and then they'll bring more people. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suspect it's something like that, or they're I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all smart enough to realize, like maybe they're all
Speaker 1: the hanging out and he's like, yeah, they all. I
Speaker 1: mean it's tough because you freeze them. Sometimes they live.
Speaker 1: Most of the time they don't. So it would be
Speaker 1: like one smartass doctor, you know, they're playing golf and
Speaker 1: he's like, be easier, butters jacked off himself into it,
Speaker 1: and then the other guy was like, okay, huh easier.
Speaker 1: He says that as he's like surreptitiously picking up his
Speaker 1: ball and dropping it ten feet forward, we're just like
Speaker 1: kicking it with his foot. He was like kicking it
Speaker 1: with his foot. Jesus Christ, He's like, look thirty six again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had an interesting journey writing this episode because I
Speaker 1: like started looking at Dr Barwin and I did a
Speaker 1: few hours of research, and then I realized that his
Speaker 1: story on its own just wasn't enough for a full episode,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to be like, oh God, damn it,
Speaker 1: I gotta start over again. And then, like by accident googling,
Speaker 1: I just came up across another doctor like that, and
Speaker 1: another and another and another. It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is like a whole thing. Yeah, no, I had Well,
Speaker 1: let's the thing, Like you hear those stories like every
Speaker 1: now and then it's like, hey, some fertility doctor did
Speaker 1: the thing, and then it wasn't until you're like then
Speaker 1: there was another and then oh they've never put those
Speaker 1: stories together well, and nobody's there's not a single like,
Speaker 1: nobody's keeping track of this ship. Nobody ever thought it
Speaker 1: would be a problem. So there's just no there's no
Speaker 1: infrastructure set up to make sure it's a fucking it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. It is a weird sca because for a
Speaker 1: long time there were no victims. Quote unquote yeah, because
Speaker 1: everyone got what they wanted seemingly until the baby grew up.
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, oh come mom, Harry and you
Speaker 1: guys aren't. Yeah, and then and then they walked down
Speaker 1: this c V as twenty d n a oh, and
Speaker 1: then it all fell apart. That's fascinate because I don't
Speaker 1: think they thought. I think some of them knew, but
Speaker 1: I think some of them thought was like, this is
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like everyone kind of
Speaker 1: guess what they want. Yeah, but yep, they didn't. They
Speaker 1: did not. Billy told you motherfucker's karma. So Billy, how
Speaker 1: you feel today? You know? We asked a question at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this as to whether or not these
Speaker 1: were fake doctors, and they're definitely had m d s.
Speaker 1: But I do still feel the same thing as going
Speaker 1: on in their heads as is going on with the
Speaker 1: other fake doctors we talked about where it's an ego thing.
Speaker 1: They want to be seen as great doctors, and in
Speaker 1: these guys this case, they did get m d S,
Speaker 1: so they went further, but they were still fundamentally the
Speaker 1: same kind of grifter, I believe, Yeah, if not more dangerous, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're more willing to put on the airs in
Speaker 1: a way that the other ones weren't. Yeah, and I think,
Speaker 1: like the untold story with like Dr Barwin, like it
Speaker 1: might be that all of the baby mishaps in his
Speaker 1: fertility clinic are the least evil he resulted in his
Speaker 1: career because he was working as a gynecologist for years
Speaker 1: while clearly unqualified to do it. Like who knows how
Speaker 1: much cervical cancer he missed or like whatever, like other
Speaker 1: funk ups, you can funk up as a gynecologist who
Speaker 1: can't pass the test to be a gynecologist. Like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's more darkness to Barwin's story in particular. I
Speaker 1: think there's probably more darkness to every one of them, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, like if they're willing to do this
Speaker 1: shortcut for this, they're not looking at everything they showed
Speaker 1: like a real doctor. Yeah. It's like there's dermatologist in
Speaker 1: l a that are just you go and you're like,
Speaker 1: you're not a real dermatologist. You're just injecting shipped into
Speaker 1: rich ladies faces. Oh yeah, you're just shooting stuff into
Speaker 1: people's lips. Yeah, And then they're like uh huh, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want you want your weight card too, and
Speaker 1: you're like, I gotta get out of here, but yes,
Speaker 1: I do want how much is it less than fifty dollars?
Speaker 1: Because the other fake doctor I go to chach I
Speaker 1: just fifty dollars. Doctor wrinkled Webcoat says it's uh see,
Speaker 1: I'm so toward because I love the whimsy of the
Speaker 1: I wish the fake medical marijuana industry had never changed. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a it's a real industry. Yeah, that started
Speaker 1: for like really helping people, and then Southern California really
Speaker 1: took it and we're like, you know, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a medicine. Yeah, and then yeah and then yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what happened because it started in San Francisco where
Speaker 1: they really gave a ship about gay people that were dying.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. And there's one of my
Speaker 1: very favorite marijuana clinics in San Francisco. Um is like
Speaker 1: name after this guy who was uh like the partner
Speaker 1: of the guy who opened it, and the dude like
Speaker 1: the shop is I don't I don't remember the name
Speaker 1: of the shop. I don't think it's that, but like
Speaker 1: the dude, the dude who opened the shop, his partner
Speaker 1: died of aids, and like he opened the shop because
Speaker 1: he had these dark memories of having to like go
Speaker 1: buy weed from shady drug dealers to like try and
Speaker 1: like help his lovers like appetite and like fight his
Speaker 1: pain and stuff. And he's like, it was just so
Speaker 1: demeaning to have to do that for you're a sick person.
Speaker 1: You love that. I don't want anyone to go through that.
Speaker 1: So yes, I don't mean to say that, like medical
Speaker 1: marijuana isn't a thing. I just I love how bullshit
Speaker 1: Southern California's medical marijuana industry got. It was beautiful, so beautiful.
Speaker 1: You're just like I can see the ocean when I
Speaker 1: got my card. That's hilarious. I can see the ocean.
Speaker 1: The doctor has a framed picture of the Mona Lisa
Speaker 1: smoking a blunt on his wall, and it is nailed
Speaker 1: to the wall next to all the symptoms of what
Speaker 1: you can say to get it. That's my I was like,
Speaker 1: which one do you got? And I was like, it
Speaker 1: was great, but I do. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of my thought is like I'm about to get a vasectomy.
Speaker 1: Um so now I'm way more a little worried than
Speaker 1: I was because oh yeah, because you just think like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta find the right doctor now, because you can't
Speaker 1: just be like, yeah, you gotta be careful about that ship.
Speaker 1: Uh damn it. It was just a little more homework
Speaker 1: than I was gonna do. I was just gonna go like,
Speaker 1: who who did that? Now I have to look into
Speaker 1: it and be like, hey, you don't have a history
Speaker 1: of fucking this up, do you? Yeah? I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a bad idea to look into with any doctor.
Speaker 1: And it's probably unfair that I'm going to make the
Speaker 1: title of this be all fertility doctors are bastards, But
Speaker 1: that is going to be the title of this episode.
Speaker 1: And if you want me to revise my opinion of
Speaker 1: your industry, for hility doctors, lobby for there to be
Speaker 1: any kind of regulation of the industry whatsoever, any kind
Speaker 1: just a law saying you can't trick women into using
Speaker 1: your sperm, or you have to go give your sperm
Speaker 1: at a sperm bank. You can't just skip that step
Speaker 1: and do it at the thing. Yes, if you are
Speaker 1: a doctor, fertility doctor, and you give your sperm to
Speaker 1: a sperm bank and then somebody uses it, fine, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, of course, yes, you need that one step.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important step that they all that
Speaker 1: the people seem to have a problem with I I'm
Speaker 1: really wondering what it was like to work with Barwin,
Speaker 1: because I'm betting at least a few of his employees
Speaker 1: had stories of like, oh yeah, every time after an insemination,
Speaker 1: he just goes and takes a nap. He gets real quiet,
Speaker 1: doesn't want to talk to anybody, usually smoke a cigarette.
Speaker 1: He had a process and it minded me of my husband.
Speaker 1: Uh why is he breathing heavy? So Billy, Yes, you
Speaker 1: want to plug your plug doubles. Uh sure, bwd tour
Speaker 1: dot com. Um, I'm in dates, uh more and more,
Speaker 1: and then you can get my record Billy Wayne Davis
Speaker 1: live at Thurdmin Records. Just you can download it or
Speaker 1: you can whatever. It's just you know, google Billy Wayne
Speaker 1: Davis and all that ship comes up. How about that?
Speaker 1: Google Billy Wayne Dave. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I think I'm on Facebook, but I don't really care
Speaker 1: about that. Just google him. He's not like me. He
Speaker 1: doesn't share a name with the guy who produced Godfather.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, though, is it? Yes? That dude is as
Speaker 1: far as those dudes go pretty rad. That's a ramy
Speaker 1: dude to share a name with. I will tell you
Speaker 1: there was a sense of pride I got when I
Speaker 1: finally started showing up on the first page of Google
Speaker 1: results with him. That took a lot of time in
Speaker 1: my career. Yeah. He just really put in the put
Speaker 1: in the work. Yeah. I mean I would say this
Speaker 1: like the way I've been on the Paramount a lot
Speaker 1: a couple of times just to do Hollywood meetings. Um there,
Speaker 1: it's the dumbest thing you there. They just want to say, hey,
Speaker 1: who are you? And you're like you don't care, and
Speaker 1: they're like, no, we don't get out of here. But
Speaker 1: you walk by Robert Evans office and you know, people
Speaker 1: have like a sign there their little company. His is
Speaker 1: this cool steel sign, but it's his signature, and I
Speaker 1: was like, that's awesome. It really like it was like
Speaker 1: that's a fucking g move. It really was. I would
Speaker 1: just walk back and I was like, tip of the
Speaker 1: hat that guy, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's uh, he's the guy that he is. And he's
Speaker 1: also a hundred years old and he still has in
Speaker 1: office at the Paramount lot that's crazy too. I am
Speaker 1: going to be now that he's stepping down, I am
Speaker 1: going to apply for a job at Paramount because they
Speaker 1: are short of Robert Evans. You're like, hey, you already
Speaker 1: have that office. I guess it's got my name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My my my job will be consuming my body weight
Speaker 1: in cocaine and green lighting movies. Um. Kind of does sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the best job ever. I um yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's like, I've impregnated more ladies than those doctors.
Speaker 1: That's true, and every one of them knew exactly what
Speaker 1: they were getting into. Yeah, there was no lab involved. No,
Speaker 1: the kids stayed in that picture. Yeah. Uh. Special edited
Speaker 1: that documentary for a full circle thing. That's cool. Good documentary.
Speaker 1: Speaking of good documentaries, you can find this podcast on
Speaker 1: the internet at behind the Bastards dot com um, where
Speaker 1: we'll have the sources for this episode. If you need
Speaker 1: to prove to somebody else that fertility doctors are an
Speaker 1: untrustworthy lot. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: I right, Okay. You can find this podcast on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram and at that estards pod. Um. You can
Speaker 1: find buy t shirts at t public dot com. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards um. And you cannot find Sophie my producer
Speaker 1: on the internet, um because she lives in a cave
Speaker 1: and only comes down once every century when her unique
Speaker 1: talents are needed to save the world from the devastation
Speaker 1: of the Poison Room. Pretty noble, mhm. So if you
Speaker 1: got a line you wanna you want to end us on. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a good line, A solid, solid Sophie work. All right, guys.
Speaker 1: Episode done.