Behind the Bastards - All Fertility Doctors Are Bastards

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

In Episode 87, Robert is joined by Billy Wayne Davis to discuss fertility doctors. FOOTNOTES:1. Lack of oversight and regulations may lead to IVF mishaps2. Fertility clinic got woman pregnant with someone else's babies, lawsuit claims3. British man 'fathered 600 children' at own fertility clinic4. 'Fertility fraud': At-home DNA tests are revealing physicians who replaced donor sperm with their own5. Their mothers chose donor sperm. The doctors used their own6. Cecil Jacobson The Baby Maker7. A Fertility Doctor Used His Sperm on Unwitting Women. Their Children Want Answers.8. States Not Eager to Regulate Fertility Industry9. Canada's Fertility Industry Now Open for (Unregulated) Business10. Sperm donor mix-up: Where do these two girls come from?11. ‘It made me feel contaminated’: Biological daughter of Ottawa fertility doctor who used his own sperm speaks of impact'12. Fertility doctor accused of impregnating at least 11 women with his own sperm13. Wrong-sperm doctor Barwin took shortcuts in career and races, too: DiManno14. After impregnating women with wrong sperm, a grudging apology from ‘baby God’: Rosie DiManno15. Renowned Ottawa doctor loses Order of Canada appointment16. Artificial insemination history: hurdles and milestones Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's that? Without an introduction, my podcast. I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything about the worst people in all of history and are chronically unprepared to actually start the show that allows me to pay rent and buy food. I'm ashamed of me. I'm sure Sophie's ashamed of me, but I can't know. Oh, now I can know, because she said yes. But you know who's 50% chance not ashamed of me? My guest today, Mr. Billy Wayne Davis. I am not, I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed. Do you know what I mean?

That's what I shoot for. Like you pulled it out kind of. Yeah, yeah. But everybody listening is going, come on, man. The lesson I learned long ago is that if I just keep talking about 60% of the time, I can pull victory from failure. And I learned that lesson with cops, but it applies to podcasting, too. Yeah, that's, I think it applies to a lot more of life than it should, that if you just keep talking, a lot of times most people be like, all right, just get out. All right. Just get going. Speaking of getting going, Billy Wayne, have you ever used a fertility doctor? That isn't an appropriate question.

It's not. I'm pretty open. I have two kids and I wasn't actively planning, but either of them. I wasn't upset it happened either, but no, I haven't. Okay. Well, would you be surprised? Like, what do you, what do you think when you think like a fertility doctor? Like, do you have any sort of conceptions in your head about the kind of person who would take that job? I think it feels like someone that wants to help couples create life and create a family. That seems like a, like someone is like a family doctor that was like, oh, I'm pretty good at making this happen. So I have a good bedside manner. Let's go to help see these people out. Yeah. It seems like, like a fundamentally noble endeavor, right?

Yeah. I like your setup here. It seems noble. Correct. It seems noble. Well, the working title of our episode is all fertility doctors are bastards. And that's, not entirely fair. And the, the large fertility doctor contingent of bastards, pod listeners are probably angry, but I will say from everything I can tell, it is a field with like a shockingly high rate of a very specific type of bastard. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. It's weird. It'll all make sense in the end, but the journey is going to be a little bizarre. See, hmm. You know what? That's, I mean, as long as they go to,

as long as we get them graduated from medical school, I think we're a, we're a step ahead of everything else we've done. Well, yes, yes. These are definitely, I don't know, you know, actually, Billy, put a pin in that. Okay. Because you and I primarily talk about fake doctors. Yeah. And it's really debatable as to whether or not a lot of these people are, like they all have MDs. So I will say, like in that regard, yes, they're more real than the fake doctors we normally talk about.

But I think in a fundamental way, all of the people we're talking about today are in fact fake doctors, regardless of their real MD credentials. See, it's like, you don't think of that part of doctor, like, because you think of that law, there's a lot of lawyers that go to that, you know, whatever. And they're like, yeah, I'm technically a lawyer. And you're like, okay, whatever. I mean, your whole profession is technicalities anyway. But yeah, a doctor is like, I'm a doctor, son of a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is an episode about the gray area and the fake doctor designation. So we'll,

we'll circle back around to discussing that round the end, if I remember to, because about 80% of the time when I say we'll circle back to something, we completely forget and never do. And that is also one of the hallmarks of my show, along with terrible introductions. So it's great. Yeah. This episode originally started as a fan submission of a subject, Dr. Norman Barwin. He's a Canadian fertility doctor who is a real piece of shit. And we will still be talking about Dr. Barwin. But as I dug into his story, I came upon a bigger, weirder and bastardier story. And that is what we will be talking about today. Now there are a million different places

we could start, but in the interest of simplicity, I'm going to kick it off in 1939 with the birth of Bernard Norman Barwin. Barwin was born in South Africa to parents who I'm sure existed at some point, but I do not know, you know, anything else at all about them. Not a lot of information on this guy's early life. We do know that he went to college at the Queen's University in Northern Ireland and moved to Canada in the 1970s to work as a doctor. And on paper, his career looked about as woke and wonderful as it's possible to be. Norman founded the first sexual health clinic for schools in Ottawa. He was a very public and charismatic advocate for expanded sex education and reproductive medicine. He spent time driving around the

Canadian capital in what he called a sex bus. Now it's pre-internet, right? Yeah, it's pre-internet. Because there's a bang bus in Florida, I've never been. Yeah, this is very different from the bang bus. Okay. Rather than being the set for a low budget porn, the sex bus was a way for Dr. Barwin to distribute pamphlets on sexual health. How many disappointed dudes walked into that bus? Don't go in there, man. They got reading stuff. It's just paper. I love that the passers-by that we voice in our episodes are always Southerners, even when we're talking about Ottawa. Yes, that is, I mean, to quote the comedian, Jesse Case, who's Southern, who's like, I mean, it sucks. But when I, even when

Southerners do a dumb voice, it's just a more Southern voice. And you're like, that's so true. You're doing the guy from the town over. Yes, exactly. Or the dumber guy in your neighborhood. And at least he'll be doing me talks. I think King of the Hill is the ultimate example of that, because like every one of Hank's friends is a different sort of fake Southern voice that I would do based on somebody I know. It's my judge doing that. I guarantee it's just him watching people in his alley going like, I can do all these voices, I think. So, yeah, Barwin, the good Dr. Barwin was an early advocate for abortion rights. He also grew increasingly interested in finding ways to help single women and lesbian couples have babies.

And over time, this grew into an interest in fertility in general. Now, artificial insemination, Billy Wayne, traces its roots back to the 1700s, when a Scottish surgeon, what other nationality would have been behind it, named John Hunter, impregnated a woman with her husband's sperm. According to the National Institutes of Health, quote, a cloth merchant with severe hypospadias was advised to collect the semen which escaped during coitus in a warmed syringe and inject the sample into the vagina. Now, hypospadias is a breath defect where the opening of your penis is on the bottom of the head rather than its normal location. So that's the first recorded artificial human insemination. But a cloth maker, is that what she said?

Yeah, a cloth merchant is the guy who was having trouble knocking his wife up. Oh, okay. I thought the way I heard you say it was that they hired him to take the sample. And I was like, what a weird choice. No, no, no, no. That's the, that was the client. John Hunter was just like, yeah, we just got to get you a warm syringe, fill it with cum and use that as your penis. And he was right. Yeah, it was right. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. So for most of the next couple of centuries, artificial insemination was primarily the purview of farmers and mainly used on livestock like cows. Human beings did figure out how to successfully freeze sperm in order to keep them viable in about 1953. But a lot of people thought it was immoral to do that with

human sperm. And so it wasn't until the 1970s that artificial insemination of human beings really took off as a practice and started to become very common. What happened that it became okay? I don't know. I think just enough old people died off. Gotcha. And like everyone else was like, oh, why don't we give a shit about this? It's seven. Everybody's on fucking cocaine, like whatever. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. So Dr. Norman Barwin then came of age as a doctor at a time when sort of the very first generation of professional fertility doctors were starting to become a thing. You know, there'd been some before, but he was really with like the first wave of people who made it into kind of a mainstream profession. So he was very much on the cutting

edge of this science. Like Tony Hawk. Yeah, like Tony Hawk. He's the Tony Hawk of using cold sperm to impregnate women whose husbands are having difficulties doing that for some reason. That's it. Yeah. You gotta be. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta shoot for something, I guess. Yeah. I mean, Tony Hawk also has a weird cold sperm obsession, but we'll save that for the Tony Hawk. Yeah. And if you're a true Tony Hawk fan, you know what we're talking about. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Very well aware. Now, Barwin quickly rose to become the president of the Canadian Fertility Society, and eventually also the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada. Barwin worked as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa,

and I also had a healthy career as a gynecologist. All this sounds great. Yeah. So far, he's the realist doctor we've talked about, right? Yes. Without a doubt. Yes. Without a doubt. There's no, there's no bleach. There's no clear sample of a head injury. He hasn't tried to kill a baby yet. Yeah, he hasn't drowned a baby in a hot tub. He keeps trying to make them. It's like the opposite of what we've been talking about. So right now, I'm like, this guy's great. Yeah. Right now, this guy does actually seem to be a great doctor. And of course, while he worked, you know, in a kind of wore a lot of hats as a medical professional, his real passion was increasingly fertility. And once he left the University of

Ottawa, he devoted the bulk of his time to helping parents get pregnant. Dr. Barwin was beloved by many of his patients. In 1997, he was invested into the Order of Canada for his quote, profound impact on both the biological and psychosocial aspects of women's productive health. He won the Barbara Cass Beggs Award for Women's Reproductive Rights and the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for his pioneering success in helping women conceive. In fact, Dr. Norman Barwin developed such a reputation for his ability to help infertile couples make babies that his patients started giving him a nickname, the baby god. Oh, wow. I'm sure that he got a lot. Yeah. The guy was like, you know what? Let's just back off that one. Let's just back that. That is a weird thing to call

someone. Like, yeah. I don't see it. Well, like you said, like, one or two people are like, hey, the baby god over there and then it catching on is very strange. Yeah. Like, if I had an intractable health issue, like say I had a UTI and like, yeah, I couldn't get it fixed for like years until like I finally found a doctor who was like able to deal with the problem. I wouldn't call him the urinary tract god. No, that would be bizarre. That would that would seem weird and not like a compliment. No, no. And he'd be like, hey, let's, let's don't, you shouldn't say that. Don't say that. You shouldn't say that. I'll give you another one if you, if you never say that again. But doctor, yeah. He makes babies and you're like, like, as like, yeah, if your wife came home,

she's like, I don't want to go see the baby god and you're like, I want to go with you. I'm going to go with you. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to check out this guy. Yeah. And they, spoiler, they absolutely should have been checking out this guy. Yeah, because I think that's what they called Sean Camp was the baby god. The baby god. He just had a lot of kids. Sean camp. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah, they should have called him Doc Stork. Oh, that was good. That's good. That's better. That's better. And that's not creepy. That's like homey and like kind of warm, you know. Yes. Baby god is, is creepy. It is creepy. Like he can kill your baby too. Yeah, he can kill your baby. It makes me think of for my fellow nerds out there,

one of the best monsters in the Dungeons and Dragons, like third edition monster manual, was this giant hovering aborted god fetus. It was a very cool monster. Anyway, that's, that's, that's a reference for the nine people listening to this podcast right now. I know, I got, I just kind of zoned out and then I zoned back in when you said aborted god fetus, where I'm like, what are you guys doing over there? That's what reels them all back in is aborted god fetus. Hold on. Hold on. Say that again. So, gods can have abortions? Yes. Yes, they can. Yeah. And when they have an abortion, that abortion is also a god. That is the problem. But not a happy one. Their abortions become gods because you can't. Son of a bitch. There's all.

So, the baby god was the Dr. Norman Barwin that the vast, vast majority of people in Canada knew up until quite recently. And to most of them, he was considered a hero. But there were some signs early on that not all was well in Dr. Barwin's practice. In 1985, he made a mistake and gave a couple the wrong sperm for their child. Now, considering how new the science of fertility was in 1985, that error made relatively little impact on his career. Everybody's gonna screw up even groundbreaking physicians. You can't make babies without spilling a little bit of sperm. I really did. I mean, when you said it, I was like, I mean, it's not that bad. Whatever. Yeah. Everyone's gonna fuck up. Yeah.

And you know, you consider other doctor mistakes where like a guy dies on the operating table, a baby that's slightly different from the baby you intended to have, not a big deal, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, we got a baby that can jump. This one's awesome. This one's way better. Neither of us can jump. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We both have eczema. This baby's gonna do great. Oh, fantastic. So in the mid 1990s, though, it happened again. A lesbian couple sued Dr. Barwin for giving them semen other than the semen that they had selected from their chosen donor.

That would be, yeah. That upset me. Yeah. Now, according to the Toronto Star, quote, that incident was designated a prior error in the agreed statement of facts presented to the panel Thursday. On that occasion, Barwin was notified of this error by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and states that he took some steps to endeavor to ensure that no such errors would occur in his practice in the future. So again, two errors, you know, in like a decade, really not a big deal. But the errors kept happening twice more during the late 1990s. And since Dr. Barwin inseminated a lot of ladies, he was still generally seen by most

people as incredibly good at it. Although it was now clear that there were some issues in his practice. That said, his high success rate meant he would still be the guy that you'd go to when other fertility doctors couldn't get you knocked up. So the mistakes kind of got swept under the rug. Nobody thought anything sinister was going on. Dr. Barwin continued his career as a celebrated physician. In 2003, during an interview, he told a reporter that accidentally inseminating a patient with the wrong sperm was his quote, worst nightmare, which, you know, makes sense. Now, a decade later, that nightmare burst onto the public stage. Like, I don't know, I should have made like an analogy to, to like, you know,

water breaking or something, but I didn't think to, and I can't properly word it now. I think we're okay without it. You know what I mean? You think so? Yeah, I think like, burst onto the stage like a bunch of amniotic fluid. That good? Yeah. Or just, yeah, because, and here's the thing, like, just slowly took its time coming out. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's really fair. That's usually how the baby, in my experience, like, they're not like, hey, I'm here. They're like, yeah. Yeah, they kind of don't want to leave, which considering the world makes sense. Oh, yeah. No, I'm still every time I think about it. I'm like, seems like that we started off in the best spot. Yeah, every time I have to wake up,

I am reminded of how difficult it must be to be a baby. Do you reach down and you feel your belly button and you're like, damn it. God damn it. Yeah. Still not there. So Dr. Barwin was found to have mixed up the sperm that had created four of the babies born from his clinic. According to the star, quote, at least four of those babies aren't the biological result of their fathers or the sperm donor designated by their mothers because of mistakes at Barwin's clinic. Experts dispatched to review procedures at the facility could isolate no evident reasons for the mix up. Those children will never know the male side of their parentage,

thus left forever ignorant of crucial medical history details. So one of those babies had grown into a man by 2013, and he testified against Dr. Barwin, and had to essentially explain what damage had been done to him as the result of the fact that nobody knew who his biological father might be. The 25 year old asked, why do I look like this? Who do I look like? I know I look like my mother, but what about the other side? I'll never know. Yes, I'm grateful I'm here. But there's the other side, another story. I don't know my medical history, and that's kind of scary. It's like, yeah, this is a real problem, you know. And these fuckups at this point by like 2013 were bad enough that Dr. Barwin was finally punished, albeit with

the medical equivalent of a slap on the wrist. He was found guilty of unprofessional conduct and incompetence, and his medical license was suspended for 60 days. He also had to pay $3,600 in legal fees. The young man who testified against him was not satisfied by this justice. Just a two-month ban, he said afterwards, I think you should completely lose his license. So, I don't know, at that point, you know, I mean, to be honest, if I'm like trying to evaluate it fairly, and I don't know the rest of the story, five or six errors in like 40 years, it doesn't seem that bad. I don't, that's where I'm at right now, too. It's like, I just, I feel like, I don't know, have you played baseball? It's mostly errors. It's hard. Yeah. Everybody fucks up more than that.

Yeah. And I know like we hold doctors to a higher standard, but still. Well, in theory, we do. In theory, we do. But I know I'm completely with you on this where it's like, I just feel like he's, and when he fucks up, you still get a baby. You still got a baby. Yeah, it's kind of what you wanted, right? There's not alligators coming out of women's like, like wombs here, like he's not fucking up that bad. Yeah, he gave you what you wanted, just not exactly what you wanted, which feels like what God does anyway, in theory. Yeah, that's just having a kid. Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah. Now, most doctors probably would have gotten harsher punishments than a 60 day suspension of their license. But the court took Dr. Barwin's sterling career into account,

his pro-choice advocacy, his groundbreaking work in reconstructive surgery for transgender people, and his many awards. All these mitigating factors saved him from losing his medical license. But they did not save him from attracting greater scrutiny from Canadian journalists. In the wake of his sentencing, the star published a deep dive into the doctor. The title of their article is one of my favorite titles in journalism history. Wrong sperm, Dr. Barwin, took shortcuts in career and racist, too. Wow. And racist, too. Racist. Yeah. Yeah. The reporters at the star revealed that Dr. Barwin was also an

inveterate marathon cheater, which we're going to talk more about in a little while. That's just my jaw drop because that's just like, why? I don't know. That's not one to cheat on. You're just like, yeah, anyone can cheat on this. That's hilarious. I think it all makes sense when we get through the rest of this guy's back story. Because it all seems actually pretty much in line to me. But yeah, it's quite a title. What a weird... I just love that they call him Wrong Sperm Doctor. That is a good... I mean, if you're going to go with Baby God for a while, I think Wrong Sperm Doctor is fitting when they figure you out. Yeah. Yeah. I love thinking of the editorial

meeting where they're like, how do we get across that this is a doctor who put the wrong sperm in people in the fewest words possible? What about Wrong Sperm Doctor? And they all laughed and then they were like, let's do it. Yeah. It's Canada. We're having fun up here. Now, Billy Wayne, you know what's as good as calling Dr. Barwin the Wrong Sperm Doctor? This transition to ads. Oh, that was smooth. That was like... Yeah. I was like, is this silk? Are we on silk right now? You barely noticed it, didn't you? Almost slid right by.

Yeah. I thought we were still talking. Sled right by like one of the Baby God's babies, sliding out of a birth canal. See, you still got what you wanted. Yep, I did. I think that should have been... You might not get what you want, but you'll get what you want. And speaking of getting what you want... Products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize

that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me

about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. That started out as a rough transition to ads, but I think we found the right transition to ads. Felt right. It felt right. It felt right. It's kind of like, hey, you don't always get the baby you'd plan to have,

but you always get the baby you're supposed to have. You get the baby you're supposed to have. That's right. Unless you're baby's Hitler. Then, you know. I still think that there was a couple, that was the baby they were supposed to have, though. That's how destiny works.

I think. That is how destiny works. I think. So, yeah, so reporters with the star found out that Dr. Barwin was a marathon cheater, which yeah, again, we're going to get to in a little bit. They also found out that despite being a professor of gynecology and a practicing gynecologist, Dr. Barwin was not, in fact, a gynecologist. Oh, shit.

Yeah, or at least he was not a Canadian gynecologist. He had been a gynecologist in Northern Ireland, and when he'd moved to Canada, his employer had let him do the job with the understanding that in three years, he would need to take the gynecology exam for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Dr. Barwin did take that test several times, but he repeatedly failed it. He maintained his status as a general physician, but that was it.

Now, somehow in spite of this, he was made the director of the High Risk Pregnancy Clinic and the co-director of the Fertility Clinic, and he was allowed to teach other people how to be gynecologists. Exactly. It's rude in Canada to ask any follow-up question, I guess. Yeah. I'm a gynecologist. He failed this test.

Ah, are you? Don't be rude. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Hey, he failed this test. Should we tell him he can't work as a gynecologist anymore? I don't know how he's failing. Just go to the Tim Hortons.

So, I'm going to quote again from the star, attempting to explain how this happened. Questioned long afterwards by the Ottawa citizen, Barwin at first claimed he left Ottawa General because he wanted more freedom, then implied resentment among professional colleagues, and finally asserted that he had nothing to prove because he'd been certified by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists in England. He did indicate embarrassment over the controversy. I'm not proud of it.

I ain't got nothing to prove. Yeah, I ain't got nothing to prove. I ain't taking your test. I ain't trying to prove I'm a doctor. Well, you said you're a doctor and a gynecologist. You did say you could do this job and then failed the test that we've set to make sure people could do this job. It's not that you have nothing to prove.

You can't prove it. I tried using that line the last time I failed a driver's license test and it did not work. But this ain't trying to prove you people I've never met. I can't drive a car or can't drive a car. I ain't what I'm trying to do. You asked the homeless man embedded in the grill of my truck if I can drive. He'll tell you I knows how. First of all, I don't think it's any of your business if I'm drunk or not right now.

That's not your business. I got nothing to prove. I ain't got anything to prove deep. Now give me my picture card. Oh, all right. Now, Billy, are you ready to talk about Dr. Barwin's marathon cheating? Yes. I don't know why it piques my interest more than the making babies he's not supposed to

because I feel like that's just most of professional athletes. Well, in the year 2000, Dr., but not a gynecologist, Barwin, ran the Boston Marathon and he pulled down a pretty incredible time. Three hours and 17 minutes. Fuck. That put him at, yeah, that's a good ass time. Now, that put him at number 14 in the 60 to 69 age group. And for some reference to people who aren't runners, a three hour and 17 minute marathon

would be fucking good if you were 20. Like that's a great time for a healthy young person. That runs a lot. That runs a lot. His time at the Victoria Marathon in British Columbia, which had qualified him for the Boston Marathon had been even better. He'd managed it in less than three hours. That's insane.

But that is insane. Would be incredible if he had actually gotten either of those times. Okay. See, the Boston Marathon doesn't just take people's word for their time. It monitors runners with cameras, referees, computer timing equipment and microchips attached to the shoes of runners. And when race officials looked into Dr. Barwin's time, they found a couple of issues. Glenn McGregor, a reporter for the Ottawa citizen who dug into Barwin, managed to dig

up a letter the director of the marathon had sent Barwin three days after the race. Quote, you failed to appear at multiple checkpoints along the marathon route. Please provide this office with any information that may be helpful to assist in authenticating that you did run the entire marathon course, including type of clothing worn, other visual identification, split times, companion runners, et cetera. Dr. Barwin had, of course, nothing to back up his claims. He was disqualified. Listen, there's a bartender who will tell you exactly where I was the whole time.

He was disqualified and banned forever from the Boston Marathon a month later. When McGregor questioned him about this initial response, his answer was, quote, I'm not quite sure now what happened, whether I had a faulty chip or what. But later, according to the star, quote, he changed his story, admitting he dropped out around the 10k point because of an inguinal hernia jumping back in at the end because he wanted to experience the exhilaration of crossing the finish line with a group of friends. I thought I'd feel the high of coming in. I got a friend to give me a lift to the finish, Barwin told the paper.

I have a hard time with this. It wasn't my intent to do this. It was a breaking point, you know? Yeah, it was a breaking point. Yeah, man. Hey, I got a hernia. I want to feel like, oh, what's it feel like to win? Like, no, you should get to the hospital. Nothing to do.

Things poking out of your side right now, man. No. So you're a doctor, huh? You're a doctor. So the auto... Oh, gynecologist. Oh, okay, okay. Okay. Best gynecologist in Canada.

Now, let me see that vagina. He just like lifts up a woman's knee. So the Ottawa citizen dug further and found that Dr. Barwin had also cheated at a local marathon in Ottawa. He'd finished first in his age group at just over three hours, but later digging found that he'd never finished the second lap of the race. When pressed on this, Barwin again blamed his hernia, claimed he'd limped out of the race and assumed they'd have recorded him as quitting,

even though he rejoined the race a kilometer away from the finish line. It's really embarrassing for me. It was quite out of character. I promise you. Yeah, getting caught. That is not in my character. I cheat all the time. I am not used to getting caught and I am embarrassed right now.

Now, unfortunately for Dr. Barwin, this is the part of the story where he starts getting caught at stuff besides marathon cheating. Does he have a wife? I think so. Yeah, I don't know anything about her. Because I feel like the whole time she's like, did you cheat again? Did you cheat at the marathon?

Did you cheat again? He's like, I beat three hours. She's like, you keep cheating. He's the kind of guy that would come back from a football game with a stolen trophy and been like, look at me. I'm running back. I won. I won the football game today.

She's like, you're 61 years old. Play for the Argonauts. Play for the Toronto Argonauts. Now, Dr. Barwin maintained his medical license for another year after that 2013 case where he got suspended for two months. But now that his name was in the news for mixing up sperm, other Barwin babies and their parents started getting DNA tests to see if they were who they thought they were.

Yeah, this became a problem very quickly. One Barwin baby eventually began to suspect that the doctor himself was her biological father after a DNA test showed she was not genetically related to the man who'd raised her. According to NBC, quote, Barwin confirmed through a DNA test that he was her father, but said the only occasion he had used his own semen was when he was calibrating an automatic sperm counter

and some of it must have become mixed up with donor sperm. Oh man, come on, dude. You buying that, Billy? God, I was cleaning it and it went off. I was cleaning mine. And it went off. And that's how you got here. I must have shot it into the crock pot of other jizz in my laboratory.

Shouldn't have kept them all in the same bowl. It is that thing of when you confront somebody like that. Everyone expects that moment when you're like, aha, I got you. And they're going to be like, okay, you got me. But that never happens with people like this. They're always like, no, probably what happened was like a bird came and took some of my jizz

and put it in this and then we had a bird problem. And you're just like, I can't even, this is. God damn it. Yes, that's all you can say is just, oh, god damn it. And he's like, I know, right? Baby, god damn it. Those fucking birds. Yeah, these I know, right?

Birds, you know? Yeah. So that lie, if it ever was believable, and I don't think that it was, crumbled immediately under a flood of new victims. One of these was a patient who'd given birth in 1990 to a daughter. She'd thought that Dr. Barwin had used her husband's sperm, but then her daughter wound up with celiac disease,

a genetic condition neither parent shared. Dr. Barwin resigned his medical license in shame in 2014, but people continued to come forward. One of those people was a young woman with the last name of Palmer. Her journey started with the DNA test she took for an online registry. She knew she'd been the product of a sperm donor, and she wanted to know if she had any relations in the area. To her surprise, she had one, a second cousin,

who just so happened to be related to Dr. Barwin, the fertility doctor who had artificially inseminated her mother. Palmer set to work trying to unravel this mystery. At one point, she confronted Dr. Barwin, who informed her that, alas, he'd lost the donor registry, and there was no way to figure out who her biological father was. Oops. Oops.

It was me. It was me. But oops, we don't know. We don't know. It was me. We don't have any proof. I lost it with the other ideas. It must have went down the jizz.

That fucking bird dropped it into the jizz bucket. Now all the inks run off. Hang in. Hang in. Ha. Ha. Sorry to take no, no child support. Uh, I'm going to quote now from the Ottawa citizen.

I don't know how this happened. She recounts Barwin telling her, and what would have become a familiar refrain. The fertility doctor had something else to say to Palmer. He told me I was obsessive for wanting the answer. You are young. You are in a healthy relationship. Is it that enough for you?

He asked. That's such a dick. He is a real dick. He is, yeah. Yeah. He's a. Palmer says she tried to, yeah. What?

You're here. What? You're here. You got a boyfriend. Why do you care who sperm made you? Shut up. Now Palmer says she tried to be cordial as possible to keep a line of communication open.

Inside, she says she was seething with rage at the roadblocks. Dr. Barwin's clinic seemed to be putting up to prevent her from getting more information about herself. I can't imagine. If you think at one point he's like, listen, no daughter of mine's going to talk to me like this. And you're just like, what? God damn it.

I was trying to get into his head that this isn't a ridiculous question. You are not breeding puppies. You are creating humans. This seems really reasonable. Palmer eventually grew convinced that her sperm donor had either been Dr. Barwin or someone close to him. She did eventually get him to take a DNA test

that confirmed he was her father. Dr. Barwin insisted this had all been the result of some tremendous terrible fuckup. In a 2015 email, he wrote her this, quote, I cannot understand how this could have happened. This has caused me much stress and remorse. I regret that we both have had to endure this major disruption in our lives.

He's fucking me special. In a way, me purposefully using my own sperm instead of your by a lot or the guy who raised you sperm to make you is a problem for both of us. And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for all my meddling kids. That's the attitude he has with all of it. Yeah, yeah.

He's mad scientist. What the fuck? No. Yeah. And you guys are mad at me? I don't understand. You exist. Some of you are dating people.

Come on. Yeah. Sounds like some of y'all are coming too. What's the problem? Yeah. Now, he begged Palmer not to tell anybody and for a while she did keep this a secret. But doing so aided her.

And in 2016, she sent Dr. Barwin this email, quote, First, let me make clear what I don't expect. I don't expect to suddenly be part of the Barwin family, nor do I want to be. I certainly don't expect any money or other forms of inheritance. What I want is much simpler than that. I don't want to feel the burden of hiding who I am,

the fullness of who I am. I expect his children and grandchildren to know I exist, that I am connected to them in this slightly confusing way, and that the relationship is not my fault. It's not some threat from an outsider. I was just born and the nature of my birth and my genetic relationship to them is entirely from choices or mistakes that others made.

Totally reasonable. All of that is insanely reasonable considering the circumstances and what has happened to that person. That might be the most reasonable paragraph that's ever been read on this show. Without, that I've heard, without a doubt. Yeah, yeah, without a doubt.

Without a doubt, that's the most reasonable human thing we've heard and it was just like, listen, what you did, I don't want anything from you. I just need to be able to acknowledge who I am as a human person and he's like, hey, easy. Think about me here. Here's his response. Oh no, no.

Now, it makes me want to jump out the window already. Like when you said here's his response, I'm already like, I don't want to, I don't want to. Well, and the window next to you is the poison room, so that would be doubly dangerous. Perfect, I'll just be dead and then I'll hit and then we'll make sure I'm dead. Barwin's response is what I'm going to read now.

Sophie, make sure the poison room door's locked. Okay, quote. Okay, copy. I am concerned that if this becomes public, my professional credibility will be damaged. Yeah, it fucking will. I am so sorry that my issues, I am so sorry that my issues are causing such an impact on you. It's not that I don't want to let my children know about you, it's just that I am worried about how they will feel about me.

If you plan to inform others, my concern is- This is a fucking piece of work. He's such a piece of shit. God, I mean any clinical psychologist is like, tell him to come see me, holy shit. Yeah, I feel like the, I'm not a psychologist, but I feel like the ethical response, if he went to a clinical psychologist,

would be for that psychologist to hit him in the face. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, you're the case, come here. That's the one case in the DSM, like they lined this out years ago, nobody's ever done it. No, it says here, you're the only type of person I can punch. I have to counsel serial killers, but you I can hit. I get to punch you, I get to punch you, this is exciting.

Yeah, I'm not done reading his response. If you plan to inform others, my concern is how they will see me. Again, it is not about you, you have been very understanding, reasonable, impatient, and from what I can gather, you are a fabulous person. I wanted to let you know why I have been delaying. I am still trying to come to terms with what I have done

and how my family will feel about me if they were aware of my unintentional action. See, it's not about you, the issue of who your father is, is not about you. It's about me, the guy who conned your mother into getting my cum inside here. Well, and he doesn't even say that. He doesn't even, he's not even that honest.

He says at the end, my unintentional action, which is still like, no, dude. No, dude, you can't start it with being like, you're gonna fuck up my doctor thing. You're not thinking about me or me or me here. And then also, I didn't do this. It was an accident. We were like, well, none of what you said, none of it. It's like, even if you're worried about your doctor thing,

then you admit that you're not a good doctor. In the same thing. Yeah, but it's very frustrating. Now, I mean, it is for sure. I mean, before we read that, I was like, well, this guy's obvious, a narcissist, where he's just like, I'm gonna, everyone's gonna take my seat. And then he can't even respond without being like,

you're not even thinking about me. You're like, oh, he's. Yeah, wow. Yeah, this guy is a hardcore narcissist. And by 2019, it was clear that Dr. Barwin had been responsible for mixing up the sperm donors for between 51 and 100 babies, and quite possibly many, many more who'll never know for sure.

For sure. Yeah, yeah. Because there's a bunch of kids out there like, oh, you went to that doctor? Fuck. I don't wanna know. Oh, you, you know what? You shouldn't read up on it.

Mm-mm, don't. Yeah. Now, it was also shown that he had been the donor himself for at least 11 of those babies. More, more. Way more? Way more. Way more, way more.

Yeah. If I had money to bet on this, this would be like, yeah, there's more, mm-hmm. There's a lot more Barwin babies who were literal Barwin babies, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Now, at this point, it became clear that whatever had gone down was no accident.

Dr. Barwin had purposefully impregnated women with his sperm against their will. Now, Billy, in a reasonable world, would you consider, would you think that would be a crime? It sounds, I mean, by definition, it sounds like rape. Yeah, it's not rape, but it lives in the same housing development. Okay, I understand that it's the same shitty-gated community.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the same shitty-gated community as rape. Yes, it is. Um, you know what's not in the same gated community as rape, Billy Wayne? Davis. Ugh. Hopefully, Coke Brother's that? Coke Brother's that?

Yeah, I mean, actually, if it's a Coke Brother's ad, it might be in that ballpark. They built the gated community. That's who built it. They built the gated community, and they built it above a leaky gas pipeline. Uh-huh. On a Native American reservation.

Yeah. Anyway, uh... Look at that sand. Thus begins our most smoothly led-into-ad-break of all time. Hmm. Products! This is a good one. Hmm-hmm.

Nice job. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series,

Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price.

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted

before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called N-Sync. What you may not know is that when I was 23,

I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev,

is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back! Yes, so as I kind of animated before the lead-out, this was not against the law. Nothing Dr. Barlow did was against the law. What's never been a thing to bring up? Right? Exactly, exactly. Nobody thought this would happen. Yeah, all of the assemblies looking at each other like,

I mean, it should be, but it's not. Ah, shit, yeah. We haven't had this issue before. Damn. It's like committing tax fraud in space. Like, nobody quite thought to make sure that that was down in the books. Yes, yes.

He international waters the shit out of that, didn't he? Yeah. Now, the only official comeuppance that Dr. Barlow suffered was a disciplinary panel from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Dr. Barlow did not show up at his own hearing, denying his victims a chance to get any kind of closure. He just showed up at the end, right?

No, he didn't even show up at the end. No, I just like to think that he started the hearing and then left and then showed up right before it ended. That would be true to form. I just wanted to feel like what the sentence was. That's all I just wanted to feel it. I wanted to feel the feeling of being sentenced. I just wanted to feel it.

Yeah. I had a hernia. Yeah, like in the middle of the hearing, he's like, I got a hernia and someone leans over and is like, is he doing the marathon thing? Is he doing the marathon thing again? At the hearing? Now, Dr. Barlow claimed that he could not make the hearing

due to unspecified medical issues, which he provided no evidence for. And his lawyer pleaded no contest, which meant that he did not dispute the facts of the case, but also did not admit guilt. It's basically like, how can I give the people I wronged the least amount of closure? That's what he did.

Now, there is currently a class action lawsuit against Dr. Barlow in the offing. And if it actually goes through, Dr. Barlow might wind up in a court. But even so, there doesn't seem to be any chance of him actually facing serious criminal penalties for his actions. See, it turns out that assisted human reproduction as an industry is kind of preposterously unregulated

pretty much everywhere on earth. In Canada, the organization responsible for keeping an eye on the practice is assisted human reproduction Canada, a federal regulatory body established in 2006. They are supposed to keep track of donor conceived kids and make sure people like Dr. Barlow don't get to impregnate numerous women in secret. But in 2008, two years after the organization's founding,

the province of Quebec challenged the federal government's jurisdiction. The case spent years mired in the Canadian Supreme Court and during that time, Health Canada was unable to actually develop any regulations. In 2012, the agency was defunded and responsibility for regulating fertility clinics was returned to the States.

So there's barely anyone keeping watch and up until recently, there were barely any laws in Canada. Certainly none aimed at stopping someone like Norman Barwen from using his own sperm on donors. And this is not just a Canadian problem. Basically everywhere the fertility industry exists, it does so with almost no regulation or oversight. The executive director for the Center for Genetics and Society

called the United States the wild west of the fertility industry. It was huge news in 2015 when Utah of all places passed a law giving donor-conceived children the right to know their genetic parents' medical history. Crazy that Utah would actually be the first to... Like the state that's like, yeah, you can sell people lead and call it a vitamin. Yeah, how many wives do you have?

Then yeah, you can do that. If you have four, you can do that. If you got four. Now, Utah is kind of unique in passing this law because most states don't even regulate how many children can be conceived by a single donor. Do you think, though, that Utah did it for some back channel Mormon genetic thing?

Where they're making sure everyone's a Mormon? If I was a better researcher, I would have checked in on that. I was just happy to see that somebody had instituted that law in the United States and shocked that it was Utah. I'm not sure why it was Utah. And I don't want to throw out Mormons, but it's just that the way they do government there is very interesting.

I mean, it might just be that because there's so many large families in Utah, the fertility industry is bigger there, and so they needed to start regulating it earlier than other places. I really don't know. I think you said it more articulately than I did, where it was just like, do you think it's weird Mormon shit? It's got to be weird Mormon shit.

It's Utah, right? Like everything traces back to weird Mormon. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, you can't get... You got to mix your liquor behind a curtain, but you can know who your biological father was. It is confusing. Now, this is where we leave Dr. Barwin.

What I found in my research is that he isn't so much a bastard as one member of a species of bastards, and this brings me to the story of Dr. Donald Klein. He was an Indianapolis-era fertility doctor in the 1970s and 1980s, the same wild and woolly day as the Dr. Barwin started practicing. You want to guess where this story goes, Billy Wayne? Yes, I do.

No, I don't. No, you know what? I don't. I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. Three dozen half-siblings of those women have been found. Three dozen? Three dozen, said Jacoba Ballard, 38, one of the biological daughters. In some instances, state prosecutors said Dr. Klein

even told women that he was using their husband's sperm, but provided his own. What is the thought? Is it that doctor thing that they get where they're like, I am... Is it some weird... I think it's narcissism. And I'll ask you, we'll hold on to that thought

because once we get a little bit more information, I think we can discuss this in detail. And I think there's a pretty clear conclusion here. But I want to go through the other cases. So Dr. Klein is still alive. There's like a... Like you said, a species of man that is like... Yeah, it's a whole type of guy.

Wow. Yeah. So Dr. Klein... No one's special. No one's special. No, no. Certainly not Dr. Norman Barwin. Even if you think, hey, I'm just secretly impregnating

all these women I am. No one else doing this shit. There's like four other people like, yeah, I'm doing it too. Yeah. You're like, dang. Yeah, I mean, I've had to deal with that feeling just because of the existence of the dollop. And it's nice to know that that's true

with doctors who use their own sperm as well. Yes. Yes. Before you go to an audition and everyone looks like you and you're like, what in fuck? Yeah, that's really... That's one of the things about Los Angeles that can drive you crazy.

It's how easy you could be sorted into a type. Yeah. Or you go to an audition and you're like, I went to one where it was written for me. Like I was the guy. Like they were like, we want Billy Wayne Davis. And then I went and I didn't get it because someone did it better than me.

He was better Billy Wayne Davis than you. And I was like, he probably was. He probably was. He had their look or whatever, whatever company. He was like, yeah, he's better than the real one. I mean, we actually, we were planning to have you on the show a lot earlier Billy Wayne, but you know, you kind of flubbed the audition.

And I have to say Jamie Locke is a great Billy Wayne Davis. Yeah. So Dr. Klein is still alive, but has refused doggedly to address any of this or to explain himself to his victims. In December of 2018, he played guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice and was given a suspended 365 day sentence.

Now the only reason he received that much of a punishment and any kind of criminal punishment at all was because he lied to state investigators when he initially claimed he hadn't used his own sperm to impregnate anyone. The fact that he had tricked a bunch of women into burying his genetic material was not a crime. Now, if he wouldn't admitted to it, would it become a crime?

He'd be fine. He'd still be fine. Yeah, he'd probably would have lost his medical license. Like that stuff they can do for it, but he wouldn't have gone, he wouldn't have gotten a criminal sentence. Yeah. But would it would have put him in like civil?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can sue people civilly for anything and I think he's certainly at risk for that because he definitely like, you can claim material harm for what he did. Yeah, because the ego of like not admitting it when you're doing it, because I think they want, it's like a, you know, that's a thing.

Yeah. I think part of them like, someone was like, hey, you can't admit you did this. Yeah. Because you will have zero money ever again. Yeah, maybe that's the case. Nice. Now the state medical board did bar him from holding a medical license again,

but since Dr. Klein had retired in 2009, this isn't an enormous punishment. We have no way of knowing how many of his genetic children are out there. Meanwhile, those children have no way of knowing who their biological father was because Dr. Klein shredded all of his patient records. Cool. Cool, dude.

He's cool. He's a good doctor. In 1992, in Virginia, a fertility doctor named Cecil Jacobson was indicted for using his own sperm to impregnate dozens of women. Now, it was illegal in Virginia. So you can take some pride in the fact that your state is way ahead of the curve on this.

He was sentenced to five years in prison and more than $116,000 in fines. But even so, it still took decades and more than 50 pregnancies for anyone to catch him. Now, Jacobson was a Brown University graduate who went on to be the chief of reproductive genetics at George Washington University. In the 1960s, he claimed to have successfully implanted

a fertilized baboon egg into a male baboon and kept the pregnancy viable for nearly four months. He never published this work, and he's probably lying about it. But the fact that he considered this something to brag about probably should have been a red flag decades earlier. Now, I'm going to quote from a medicalbag.com article

on the man. Quote, by the 1980s, Jacobson had started operating a genetic center in Virginia. He proclaimed himself a fertility specialist and began treating patients who had difficulties getting pregnant. He used the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, HCG, regularly, and as a form of treatment.

Jacobson would falsify pregnancies, have patients undergo ultrasounds, and then tell them that the fetus had died around the third month of pregnancy. Suspicions began to arise, which were reported to local authorities. Federal investigators stepped in and came to find that in addition

to the falsified pregnancies, Jacobson had been artificially inseminating patients with sperm, supposedly from screened and anonymous donors. The investigators determined that there was no donor program and that Jacobson was using his own sperm to impregnate patients.

Oh, there's a donor program. Oh, yeah, there's a program. We got a program. Every day at 5 p.m. It's suspected that in total, Jacobson probably fathered as many as 75 children with his own semen. But, okay, there's another part of this,

where it's like, you're not actually getting laid either. No, I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it. I know it's not yet, but it is like a fun part of making a baby. It is the better part of making. It's way better than like, you know, putting it in the glass

and then putting it in the thing and then maybe, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say when they turn out to be Will Wheaton, but yeah, all of those other parts suck, too. Now, there are many fertility doctors with stories like this. On the 24th of August, 2019, two days before I wrote this script,

Today Magazine published an article titled Their Mothers Chose Donor Sperm, Their Doctors Used Their Own. It tells the story of Eve Wiley, who learned at age 16 that she'd been conceived via artificial insemination. The doctor responsible, Kim McMorris, told her mother that he'd found said sperm

through a California sperm bank and believed this to be true until she took a consumer DNA test. Eve told reporters, you build your whole life on your genetic identity, and that's the foundation, but when those bottom bricks have been removed or altered, it can be devastating.

I will say, in the future, I'm going to use California sperm bank as a pseudonym from my testicles, but only when I'm in California. I like that, though, the California. Yeah, I got it from the California sperm bank. You can be sure of that. And I like that a lot of this was discovered with the commercialization of DNA testing.

Like, you think these doctors are, like, walking through a CVS the first time they saw, like, a DNA test thing, and they're like, this is not good. This is not good for me. This ain't going to work well for me. Oh, I don't like that. I do not like this. Now, Doctor, what do you think of this 23andMe stuff?

It's a scam. It's a scam. It's, mm-mm, bad. And the best part is, it is kind of a scam. This is basically the only thing it was really good for. Yeah, and in helping catch murderers, I think law enforcement is using it for stuff that I'm supposed to. It had a lot of problematic aspects,

but in this case, it did a good thing. Yeah, what do you think of 23andMe? Well, I discovered that my dad is a doctor that is also the dad of 75 other people that we know about. Yeah. You don't hear that commercial on the podcast. Cool. I found out my family comes from Norway.

Yeah. Now, partly as a result of Eve's case, Texas has passed a law making this sort of thing a crime. It is now defined as sexual assault there. So in this one case, Texas is actually an example of a reasonable and timely response to a clear problem. So it happened once in Texas state history. Good for them.

Good. Good for them. We should get, Texas, you get a lot of shit, and deservedly so. And deservedly so? You really do. You deserve it. But hey, good job on this one.

On this one, nailed it. Don't get cocky. You nailed it. Yeah. Don't get cocky. You nailed it like the biological pair or like the people who raised all these kids did not nail their, you know, you could see where the joke I

was trying to go for there was. Yeah. It just didn't work out. I see why you chose journalism. But I do think, like, even with the Canada thing or the Mormon thing, it's like, I do feel like there's probably livestock. There's a livestock reason somewhere involved.

And while they're ahead of this, it's like artificial insemination. Somebody reads this story about people and is like, my god, this is going to infect the steers. Yes. That's industry. That's our industry here. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I do think there's probably something. Because that's how I know about artificial insemination is because I was raised on a cattle farm. And it's not as complicated a process as people would think it is. No. No. No, it is not.

It is not. It is not. Although I think people would be interested at the lengths that are gone to stop bulls from actually having sex with anything. Yes. Yeah. That's an entertaining part of that industry.

They're pretty horny, too. Yeah, they get them all worked up and then they're like, hey, how are we going to stop them? And they're like, ah, pretty strong. There's a lot of, like, in the meat industry, there's a lot of, like, things to be angry about in terms of an injustice. But that should be on the list.

Yes. Yeah, it's not as bad as, like, keeping animals in their own fecal matter outside of sunlight and stuff in a cramped pen. But it's still not cool. It's not. It's mean. That's why they're mad.

Yeah, it's really mean. That's why they don't want those dudes on. Yeah, they are onry sons of bitches. They're just like, oh, you're mad because that dude's on you? No, no, I don't care he's on my back. They haven't let me fuck in a while. For an idea of, like, the environment I grew up in, my mom's favorite sport to watch was bull riding,

primarily for when the guys would get horribly injured. She was loved watching those guys get fucked up by bulls. It's awesome. It's awesome. It is awesome. That's what you, and it's like when, my, that's when my whole problem with the NFL not coming forward, just say it causes brain damage

and then they sign a waiver and you get to make a bunch of money. Look, we know guns kill people and it's a huge industry in the United States. If you were just like, yeah, football's horrible for people, do you still want to make $100 million? People would still say yes. They know it already and do it. Yeah.

And then when someone stops like Andrew Luck and everybody's like, what is he doing? He's like, well, I think he's, he's... He wants to enjoy his millions of dollars before his brain melts. Yeah, he just wants to remember what life is like. Yeah. Yeah.

God. Yeah, he knows he's got 10 years left before he shoots himself in the chest and leaves a note telling doctors to study his brain. Study my brain because I'm a good person. Which has happened to a bunch of those guys. Yeah. Number one, Junior, say all that you know about,

that there's other ones that you don't know about that are like, I'm tired of being crazy. Yeah. Horrible. Thank God I went to one football practice in college and was like, fuck this. I did play for a season in high school, but I was not good at it

and I mostly avoided the head injuries. See, that was pretty good at it in high school so I could avoid the head injuries. So that was the, that was mine was like, I don't like hitting people, but I like scoring touchdowns. I can say all my head injuries in life have come from teaching special ed. I think my dad might back that up too.

Yeah. No, it's, you'll get hit in the head a lot. Depending on what type of teaching you do. Football coach had a special ed teacher. I'm sure he's like, no, I got hit way more special ed. Now, yeah, like I said, Texas passed a law of making this a crime after the McMorris case, but Dr. McMorris's behavior remains legal

in 47 American states. And I'm going to quote again from today. Dr. Jodi Madira, a law professor at Indiana University, is following more than 20 cases in the United States and abroad. They've occurred in a dozen states, including Connecticut, Vermont, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada, she said, as well as in England, South Africa, Germany,

and the Netherlands. So many doctors use their own sperm to impregnate women. So many fertility doctors. It's fucking crazy how common it is. That case in the Netherlands was probably... It's borderline and epidemic. It is an epidemic. It's absolutely an epidemic.

I didn't include every case, just the most obvious ones. I only had so much research time. I can't. So is it like a funny thing they're doing? Like where the... That's pretty funny, which is... Like I said, let's get through the rest of this and then we'll talk about what the fuck we think is going on.

You keep saying that and then it goes so much... Yeah, there's just a lot more. ...fucking deeper than I could ever believe. So I'm like, yeah, we're almost there. And then you're like, no, there's 48 more dudes that are doing this. Yes, I have 112 pages more to go through. That case in the Netherlands was probably

fertility specialist Jan Carbot. He was confirmed by DNA testing to a fathered 56 children with women who distinctly did not intend to have his sperm inside of them. Carbot's clinic closed in 2009, but much of this activity had happened decades. Prior, and at least one local attorney doubted whether or not he'd ever done anything legally improper.

Quote, 30 years ago, people looked at things in very different ways. Carbot could have been an anonymous donor. We don't know that. There was no registration system at the time. Oh, that's a good lawyer right there. He's a bad person, but that's a good lawyer. But a good lawyer.

Solid lawyering. Yeah, I'm impressed, but I'm not invited to my barbecue. Yeah. Now it's worth noting that there are reasons some doctors may have used their own sperm outside of narcissism or just some bizarre kink, or I should say in addition to narcissism. Yeah.

Up until the late 1980s, frozen sperm technology was still quite primitive. Many doctors might have justified using their own fresh sperm because they knew it would work better than the alternative. No one back in 1975 saw home DNA testing kits as very likely. And I think this might explain Dr. Barwin's reputation as the baby god. Other fertility doctors in Ottawa

probably didn't use their own semen in patients, so they relied on the frozen stuff and had lower success rates. Dr. Barwin's marked success was a direct consequence of the fact that he was fine lying to people about whose semen they were getting. And this, Billy Wayne Davis, brings me to the story of Bertolt Wissner

and his wife, Mary Barton. I don't know. Now they were some of you very first. This is you say this for the end and I don't like it. Some of the earliest pioneers. If I was in a horror movie, I'm not going in there. I'm just gonna. This is definitely part of a horror movie.

I'm not going in there. They were among the earliest pioneers in the fertility field. They started a clinic in London in the 1940s and over the years they took part in more than 1500 successful conceptions. Now, at the time, they told clients that all of their sperm donors came from a small collection

of their friends who were all geniuses and accomplished academics. Yeah, me too, man. Come in this house. We'll fuck you. They're all geniuses. Now you want to guess how many of these babies were his? Every one of them.

No, no, it's not that bad. Roughly one third of them. So about 600 children are estimated to have been conceived to be a Weissner sperm. Now, most of these children will probably never learn the truth since it took so many decades for anyone to realize what was going on. It's actually impossible for anyone to know

how many children Weissner had or how many of those kids may have wound up dating or marrying each other. Oh, I forgot about that part. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, this might explain a little bit of why English people are so weird. But, you know, no way to know.

It's, well, there's a cocktail over there. Yeah. Now, in 2018, a Queens couple finally succeeded in conceiving a child through in vitro fertilization. But when the mother gave birth in March of this year, she and her husband were shocked to find out that, unlike them, their children were not Asian, according to today.com.

The couple reported they had spent over $100,000 at CHA Fertility Center in California for attempts at IVF, according to a lawsuit filed last week. Red flags began to pop up throughout the pregnancy. A sonogram showed the woman was carrying twin boys if the couple had not used male embryos. When they contacted the clinic about it, doctors simply told them the sonogram was incorrect.

Following the birth, the couple was shocked to see that the babies they were told were formed using both of their genetic material did not appear to be, the lawsuit stated. The babies were not related to either of their parents or to each other. The couple relinquished custody of the children. Now, it is unclear who the parents were in that case.

We have no idea. It is entirely possible that this case is not at all the result of a shady doctor wanting to spread his seed or anything like that. It may have just been a fuck up due to the fact that in 2019, nobody really cares about making sure this piece of the medical field abides by the same rules that other parts of medicine

that don't involve semen do. Dove Fox, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, provided this explanation to today. Fertility centers, and there are almost 500 of them in the United States today, operate free of almost any regulation at all, Fox told NBC News. There's no federal law, no state law, no enforced professional guideline

that enforces requirements, that licenses these facilities in the way that they label or diagnose or handle sperm, eggs, and embryos that result in the creation of people. In fertility medicine, it's very different than any other field where we regulate very closely what's called never events. These are major avoidable mistakes,

things like blood transfusion on the wrong person or a surgery on the wrong body part or the wrong patient. There, we require mandatory disclosure and we figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. We have nothing like that for what you might call never events in reproductive technology. So that's neat. I mean, I might stop doing comedy

and just get into Dr. Billy's baby making bungalow. Dr. Billy's baby clinic, they come from a California sperm bank. It sure does. He can only say five or six couples a day until he's about 45 and then he's gonna retire, I think. Oh, Jesus. So yeah, my thinking on why these guys do it, I think you've got to mix the two kinds of doctors

in fertility medicine. You have good doctors who choose to go into fertility medicine and do their best and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail because using frozen sperm is harder than using fresh sperm and it's a difficult field. And then you have guys like Dr. Barwin who are not actually great doctors but who, because they're narcissists,

want to be seen as the best and who realized at a certain point, I can be the best fertility doctor if I just use my own fresh cum all the time. Yeah, I mean, that's a good business decision too, I think, more than anything. It's a great, that's why he became the baby god. I think it's the same with most of these guys.

They just wanted to be seen as great. I don't think it's a kink for most of them. I don't think it's about wanting to spread their seed. I think they want to be seen as great doctors and literally the easiest way in medicine to be seen as a great doctor without actually being good at medicine is to be a cheating fertility doctor.

Like up until recently, yeah. Well, especially the marathon guy, like cheating was not, that was like, he was all about results. He wanted to seem like the best, yeah. Yeah, he had a, I would say probably insecurity. I would say for sure. Which is a weird thing to lead to wanting more children.

I don't think he cared about that. You just think it was, well, and I guess you're right because it's not even that personal when you're in the lab doing the thing. It's probably, you're just thinking about like, oh, this will make these people happy and then I'll get more money and then they'll bring more people.

Yeah, yeah, I suspect it's something like that. Or they're, I mean, they're all smart enough to realize like maybe they're all hanging out and he's like, yeah, they all, I mean, it's tough because you freeze them, sometimes they live, most of the time they don't. So it would be like one smart ass doctor, you know, they're playing golf and he's like,

bees or if I just jacked off myself into it and then the other guy was like, huh, okay. Huh, easier, huh? It would be easier, wouldn't it? He says that as he's like surreptitiously picking up his ball and dropping it 10 feet forward. Yes, we're just like kicking it with his foot. He's like, yeah, kicking it with his foot.

It would be easier. Jesus Christ. He's like, look, look, 36 again, par. Yeah, I had an interesting journey writing this episode because I like started looking into Dr. Barwin and I did a few hours of research and then I realized that his story on its own just wasn't enough for a full episode

and I was starting to be like, ah, God damn it, I got to start over again. And then like by accident Googling, I just came across another doctor like that and another and another and another and another. It's like, oh my God, this is like a whole thing. Yeah. No, I had, well, that's the thing,

like you hear those stories like every now and then it's like, hey, some fertility doctor did the thing. And then it wasn't until you're like, then there was another, right? And then like, oh, they've never put those stories together. Yeah. Well, and nobody's, there's not a single, like nobody's keeping track of this shit.

Nobody ever thought it would be a problem. So there's just no, there's no infrastructure set up to make sure it's a fucking, it doesn't happen. It is a weird scam because for a long time there were no victims, quote unquote. Yeah. Because everyone got what they wanted seemingly until the baby grew up and was like, hey, how come I'm hairy

and you guys aren't? Yeah. And then, and then they walked down the CVS and they're like, hey, $20 DNA. Oh, and then it all fell apart. That's fascinating because I don't think they thought, I think some of them knew, but I think some of them thought was like, this is one of those things where it was like,

everyone kind of gets what they want. Yeah, but yeah, they did. They did not. And boot is over there. So Billy. I told you, motherfuckers, karma. Yeah. So Billy, how you feel today?

You know, we asked a question at the beginning of this as to whether or not these were fake doctors. And they definitely had MDs, but I do still feel the same thing as going on in their heads as is going on with the other fake doctors we talked about where it's an ego thing. They want to be seen as great doctors. Yes.

And in these guys's case, they did get MDs. So they went further, but they were still fundamentally the same kind of grifter. Yes. I believe. Yeah. If not more dangerous. Yeah.

Because they're more willing to put on the ears in a way that the other ones weren't. Yeah. And I think like the untold story with like Dr. Barwin, like it might be that all of the baby mishaps in his fertility clinic are the least evil he resulted in his career because he was working as a gynecologist for years while clearly unqualified to do it.

Like who knows how much cervical cancer he missed or like whatever other fuck ups you can fuck up as a gynecologist who can't pass the test to be a gynecologist. Yeah. Like I'm sure there's more darkness to Barwin's story in particular. I think there's probably more darkness to every one of them

because like you said, like if they're willing to do this shortcut for this, they're not looking at everything they showed like a real doctor. Yeah. It's like those dermatologists in LA that are just, you go in and you're like, you're not a real dermatologist. You're just injecting shit into rich ladies faces. Oh yeah, you're just shooting stuff into people's lips.

Yeah. And then they're like, uh-huh, yeah. Mm-hmm, do you want your weed card too? And you're like, I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here. But yes, I do want my weed card. But yeah, I do. How much is it, is it cheaper?

Is it less than $50? Because the other fake doctor I go to charges $50. Yeah, this Dr. Wrinkle Blabcoat says it's $45. See, I'm so torn because I love the whimsy of the, I wish the fake medical marijuana industry had never changed. Well, there was a, it's a real industry. Yeah. That started for like really helping people.

And then Southern California really took it and were like, you know, okay, yeah, yeah, it's a medicine, yeah. And then, yeah, that's what happened. Because it started San Francisco where they really gave a shit about gay people that were dying. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. And there's one of my very favorite marijuana clinics in San Francisco is like named after this guy who was like the partner of the guy who opened it.

And the dude, like the shop is, I don't remember the name of the shop. I don't think it's that, but like the dude who opened the shop, his partner died of AIDS. And like he opened the shop because he had these dark memories of having to like go buy weed from shady drug dealers to like try and like help his lovers like appetite and like fight his pain and stuff. And he's like, it was just so demeaning to have to do that for a sick person you love that I don't want anyone to go through that.

So yes, I don't mean to say that like medical marijuana isn't a thing. I just, I love how bullshit Southern California's medical marijuana industry got. It was beautiful. So beautiful. Where you're just like, I can see the ocean when I got my card. That's hilarious. I can see the ocean. The doctor has a framed picture of the Mona Lisa smoking a blunt on his wall

and it is nailed to the wall. Next to all the symptoms of what you can say to get it. That's my, that was my favorite one. Pour it on the list. He's like, which one do you got? And I was like, son of a bitch, what is this? Oh, it was great. But I do, I mean.

There's a lot, my thought is like, I'm about to get a vasectomy. So now I'm way more a little worried than I was. Because. Oh yeah. Because you just think like, oh, I gotta find the right doctor now. Because you can't just be like. Yeah, you got to be careful about that shit. Damn it.

It was just a little more homework than I was going to do. I was just going to go like, who did that? Now I have to look into it and be like, hey, you don't have a history of fucking this up, do you? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's not a bad idea to look into with any doctor. And it's probably unfair that I'm going to make the title of this be All Fertility Doctors or Bastards.

But that is going to be the title of this episode. And if you want me to revise my opinion of your industry, Fertility Doctors, lobby for there to be any kind of regulation of the industry whatsoever. Just any kind of. Any. Just a law saying you can't trick women into using your sperm. Or you have to go give your sperm at a sperm bank.

You can't just skip that step and do it at the thing. Maybe. Yes, if you are a fertility doctor and you give your sperm to a sperm bank and then somebody uses it, fine. Yes. Yes, of course, of course. Yes, you need that one step. I think that's an important step that people seem to have a problem with.

I'm really wondering what it was like to work with Barwin, because I'm betting at least a few of his employees had stories of like, oh yeah, every time after an insemination, he just goes and takes a nap. He gets real quiet, doesn't want to talk to anybody. Usually smoke a cigarette. He had a process and it reminded me of my husband. Why is he breathing heavy? So, Billy.

Yes. You want to plug your plugables? Sure, bwdtour.com. I'm adding dates more and more and then you can get my record, Billy Wayne Davis, Live at Third Man Records. Just you can download it or you can whatever. It's just Google Billy Wayne Davis and all that shit comes up. How about that?

Yeah, I hate Google. Google Billy Wayne Davis. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. I think I'm on Facebook, but I don't really care about that. Yeah, just Google him. He's not like me. He doesn't share a name with the guy who produced Godfather.

That's awesome, though. Is it? Yes, that dude is, as far as those dudes go, pretty rad. That's a rad dude to share a name with. I will tell you, there was a sense of pride I got when I finally started showing up on the first page of Google results with him. That took a lot of time in my career. Yeah, he is pretty accomplished.

I had to really put in the work, yeah. I mean, I would say this, the way I've been on the Paramount a lot a couple of times, just to do Hollywood meetings, it's the dumbest thing they just want to say, hey, who are you? And they're like, you don't care. And they're like, no, we don't get out of here. But you walk by Robert Evans' office, and you know how people have a sign, they're a little company.

His is this cool steel sign, but it's his signature. That's awesome. That's a fucking G move, yeah. It really was. I would just walk by and I was like, tip of the hat, that guy, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, he's the guy that he is. And he's also 100 years old, and he still has an office at the Paramount lot.

That's crazy, too. I am going to be, now that he's stepping down, I am going to apply for a job at Paramount, because they are short of Robert Evans. You should be like, hey, you already have that office. Could I just, it's got my name on it. Yeah. My job will be consuming my body weight in cocaine and green lighting movies. You're hired.

Kind of does sound, yeah. Sounds like the best job ever. I think, yeah. And he's like, I haven't pregnated more ladies than those doctors. That's true, and every one of them knew exactly what they were getting into. Yeah, there was no lab involved. No, the kids stayed in that picture. Yeah.

The God Directing on my special edited documentary for a full circle thing. That's cool. It's a good documentary. Speaking of good documentaries, you can find this podcast on the internet at behindthebassards.com, where we'll have the sources for this episode if you need to prove to somebody else that fertility doctors are an untrustworthy lot. You can find me on Twitter at I write okay. You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram and at bastards pod.

You can find by tshirts at tpublic.com behind the bastards. And you cannot find Sophie, my producer on the internet, because she lives in a cave and only comes down once every century when her unique talents are needed to save the world from the devastation of the poison room. Pretty noble. Pretty noble. Sophie, you got a line you want to end us on? No.

That's a good line. Solid, solid Sophie work. All right, guys. Episode done. What would you do if the secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands.

Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.