Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The (Male) Doctor Who Redesigned Vaginas

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Robert is joined again by Courtney Kocak to continue to discuss Dr. James Burt. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? 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?

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? Committing illegal surgery? My nightmare? Obstetricians? I mean, that was definitely an improvement over Tuesday's intro, which was... That was pretty good, I thought. I thought that got a lot of emotion out. I got hype on that intro for sure.

Thank you. Yeah, so Courtney Kosak returning for part two of the story of Dr. James Burt, the man who decided he could do vaginas better. So happy to be back in honor of this wonderful man. This hero. Yes. How are you doing as we roll into part two, Courtney? I'm just clutching my vagina tightly, just trying to keep it as God intended or whatever that means. You got to clutch it tightly because he's still out there somewhere, right?

Just lurking around Florida for retirement communities. Oh God, yeah, there's got to be some retirement communities that are going to have some dark stories in a little bit. But yeah, you know, he sucks, and we're going to talk about one of the more unsettling books I've ever heard of. So when we last left our hero, seems like the wrong word. No, no. Dr. James Burt and his fourth wife, Joan, they had co-authored a book called Surgery of Love. Oh, no. It was aimed at creating popular demand for his love surgery.

I have attempted to find a copy of this book, but as of yet, I have been unable to do so. Thankfully, significant details about it exist, both thanks to the book The Love Surgeon and from a story in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, also written by Sarah Rodriguez, who I assume must have acquired a copy herself. The information I found on this book makes me think that it must be among the most offensively misogynist things ever written. It is a fascinating mix of paternalistic chauvinism and creepily sex-positive pseudoscience. Chapter titles include... Is everybody ready? No.

Braced for impact here? Chapter titles include... Okay. This one's gonna hurt. All right. I'm gonna take a sip of Zevia here. Ah, that soothes the horror. Tight, tighter, tightest.

That would have been an improvement, Courtney. Oh, no, I read ahead. It's bad. Yeah. Here's the first title I'm gonna read. There is no foreplay in ecstasy of living and loving, colon, only orgasmic loving. Don't even know what that means. He needed an editor.

Oh, my God. He sure did. Next chapter. Optimal sexual functioning is sexual ecstasy beyond the wildest imagination of most people, but within reach of all exclamation point. A lot of random capitalizing in here, too. Even as most people have been living it with their mates will ultimately destroy their sexual ecstasy. Oh, my God.

And my personal favorite. How any man can make his woman into a seething mass of perpetual passion for himself, semi colon, your own private sex pot in your own private world. Shut up, Robert. That's made up. That's a chapter. That's a chapter. Your own private sex pot in your own private world.

That's he should be canceled today. Retroactively. He should be. That's the that's the goal of this. Cancel culture has finally come from the for the love surgeon. It's bad. And there's a lot that's in that last chapter in particular. I think it really highlights the thing that's never admitted, but is key to all this, which

is jealousy and not just even jealousy that your wife might be cheating, but that there might be other men who are a better lover than you. That's what this is about, right? Is like being able to feel like you're some porn star dynamo and surgically altering the body of your partner in order to do that. Because learning things is for is for cooks. It's it's great. Did he ever state that I would?

No, no, this you got to read in between. But like, you don't title the chapter. No. How any man can make it. That is a grievous. That is a grievous. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah.

You're your own private sex pot and you're like the fact that he like your own private world, right? A world where there are no other men, where there's no possibility of her taking another lover. She's so obsessed with you and your dick. That's that's what he's saying there. You know, he's a profoundly insecure man. You would have to be to do this.

The book opens with a biography of the authors who write that they quote manage the children still at home to small boys and their homes and Dayton and Vale. Lives are totally dedicated to each other with their hobbies of travel and skiing and writing secondary to just always being together and pleasuring each other. Now, obviously James's prior marriages and the allegations of abuse against him are left out. As you might guess from that last line I quoted, the whole book frames marriages being first and foremost about constantly fucking each other.

Dr. Burt is very clear that he believes the key to a happy marriage is two fold incessant owning and a woman who is totally submissive to her husband. In the book he attacks what he calls the quote, current definition of love is defined by the daily living habits of most people. The healthy variant of this would be to recognize that the burdens of life in modern society and raising children often cause couples to lose sight of the joys of physical intimacy and it can be good to be reminded of that, right? That's the healthy version of what he's saying.

What he's saying is that having lives outside of constantly sexually pleasuring each other is a distraction from the only thing that makes marriage worthwhile, right? And potentially a threat. Yeah, and a threat potentially. Anything that's not fucking is a threat to the only reason you would want to be with a person. It's a very shallow view of intimacy. Now, it takes a lot for me to say this book is too pro-sex, but this book is certainly too pro a very specific and unhealthy kind of sex.

In Dr. Burt's view, sex is the only thing that matters in a healthy relationship. He urges couples to quote, disregard previous definitions of the word love in order to concentrate on what he calls the ecstasy of living and loving. Burt advises the couples reading his book to take absolutely every opportunity to touch and fondle each other. He provides the example that if a woman is cooking bacon in the morning, her husband should go through her clothing to manipulate her clitoris until she orgasms. The love surgery, he notes, will make this breakfast fondling easier,

as a circumcised clitoris would allow for the woman to climax in a matter of seconds. This makes it clear that, again, the purpose of his surgery is less about a woman's pleasure and more about making it easier for the man to feel like a sex god. He bragged that after surgery, a husband would be able to bring his wife to orgasm with quote, a blink or two of his eyelashes. Oh my god, I'm just in a perpetual cringe. It's very good. I mean, yeah.

Burt goes on to write that every aspect of daily living ought to be focused entirely around love and physical loving. His surgery then was so necessary because biology got in the way of a couple fucking the way and with the frequency that Dr. James Burt wanted personally to fuck. According to the New York Times, Burt's book included this real banger of a line, quote, women are structurally inadequate for intercourse. This is a pathological condition amenable to surgery. Oh my god.

Structurally inadequate. Did he ever take a second to think it might be him? No, no, no. This is not a man who spent one solitary second of his life analyzing his own behavior. Also, do you love how he just straight up redefined the word love? He's like, actually, I've got some notes on love as well. Yeah. Love is actually all this stuff about like partnering and like, you know, potentially

like raising human beings or even just like taking on the burdens and difficulties of life together. It's just boning. It's just constant, constant banging. That's all that it is. Yeah. It's very, again, a very sad view of it. You know, this guy is raised in a repressive sexual culture.

You can see some of what he's doing is kind of like a reaction to the sex negative attitudes that he would have been raised with, but he takes it in like an equally unhealthy opposite direction. It's great. Yep. Burt assures his readers in the book that love surgery will turn any woman into a quote, horny little mouse. Bro.

Oh, it gets worse. Love surgery was the magic key to quote, fix women both from the inherent deficiency of their biology and from the strains of childbirth. He wrote that having children made many women large enough to drive a truck through sideways, as I already noted. No. He described their vaginas as real clappers by which he meant he had enough room to clap his hands in their vagina.

Oh my. Oh my fucking god. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What the fuck, guy? Yeah. He should have gotten his medical license taken away from that comment. Yeah. Just that comment.

That ought to be enough. I often think if we could replace our federal law enforcement agencies with just a group of men and women in suits who find people who are, who say really shitty things and just walk up to them, couple people in suits with briefcases, walk up to them and say, are you such and such? Yeah. And then just hit them right in the face in public. That would be the comment that would have.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a G-man hitting him in the jaw in the middle of a denny's would have been the right response to writing that. Listen, you don't even, yeah, you can just, oh my god, it hurts. It's awful. It's a nightmare. Dr. Burt's version of intimacy gives absolutely no time or consideration to the ability of

women to give themselves orgasm. He does not consider climaxing to be a thing that couples work towards together, either. Instead, he seems to view orgasm as something a man gives a woman. Burt wrote that men, quote, with their superior physical strength, should lovingly, physically force their wives to have multiple orgasms until she, quote, just can't stand it. If she should demand that he stop and say that she's had enough, Dr. Burt advises using physical strength to, quote, force her to submit, for, quote, further and further and further orgasms.

Dr. Burt goes on to write that the only difference between rape and rapture was salesmanship. Oh my fucking god. His first wife should have just taken that straight to the courthouse and been like, don't be so. Yeah, rapists just aren't good salesmen. That's so horrible. A nightmare. I don't even have a joke.

No, no. What can you say about that line? How can you write that line without bursting into flames? It's amazing. Great copywriting, though. Great. Thank you. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, the man was a literary Titan. So the misogyny dripping from this book is particularly clear when Dr. Burt writes about his fourth wife, Joan, from the love surgeon, quote. Although Joan Burt was, according to the author, biographies on the flap of surgery of love and accomplished actress and musician and a sought after professional in real estate with great artistic abilities, in James Burt's view, a wife must give exclusive attention in her private life to her husband in every and always and focus attention on his wants,

needs, goals, and face her children and the world at large is a member of a loving couple, not as an individual. A good wife, according to Burt, will never at any time in any way in public or private be critical or demanding of her husband, Burt's emphasis. If the husband wanted his wife to gain or lose weight, dress a certain way, or wear makeup, she should do so. Burt believed in both their social and sexual roles, women were to be supine. Oh, my God.

Yeah. I would never have, I don't know. How are you supposed to get married in this day and age? Uh, you mean back when Burt's writing it? Yes. Oh, if a man decides he's interested in you, you just do whatever he says. Look, that's the beauty of Dr. Burt's way. You don't have a choice.

It's fine. As long as he's a good salesman. Ugh. Ugh. Real piece of shit. Yup. On the upside, there's no upside. Yeah.

I was like, where are you going with that, buddy? Is he still performing surgery? Oh, absolutely. Oh, my gosh. You think he's going to stop once he publishes his book? No. The book is trying to get more people to take it. He's decided to go public with it, right?

He's announcing that he's doing his surgery. Dr. Burt decided that this book, which he hoped would help his love surgery be taken seriously by the medical community, was a good place to brag about how good he was at fucking his wife. And I'm going to quote from medical bag here. The book even bragged that his wife was one of the doctor's most successful patients. And that quote, Joan has climaxed in elevators from the Southampton Princess in Bermuda to the Kulima in Hawaii, more than many women do in their entire lives.

Basically, she orgasms more on like cruise ship elevators than most women ever do in their whole lives. Because I'm fucking her in the elevators of all these cruise ships. Oh, my fucking god. And she got the clit surgery? Oh, yeah. Is there any? Yeah.

Yeah. He did all the stuff to her. Joan Burt also commented that her husband had finally, for the first time, given women quote, the opportunity to enjoy sex. Oh, my God. What a beautiful brainwashing. Some ancient Roman ladies I might introduce him to. Yeah.

So according to the New York Times, Dr. Burt also used his book as a place to admit to the world that he'd been committing love surgery for years without the consent of his patients. Quote. In the book, Dr. Burt admitted to performing reconstructive surgery on many hundreds of women without their consent, usually after the birth of a child. The patient, he wrote, had not been informed that anything more had been done to her than delivery and episiotomy repair. Or yes, you had stitches with your delivery.

This is in fact outrageous. But it didn't seem that way to an awful lot of people at the time. And this is because the 1970s was the era in which informed consent in the medical context did not quite mean what it does now. The existence of informed consent as a legal term and a required precursor for receiving a medical procedure only dates back to 1971 and has only been official in a meaningful way since 1973. Even then it did not.

And again, people started talking about this. There were doctors in like the late 50s talking about the fact that we need to be getting informed consent, but it's not really mandated until the early 70s. And even then they're using the term informed consent. You and I would not call what most doctors were getting in that period informed consent. The idea like now when you say like you need informed consent to his procedure, it means patients or at least the patient's representative in the case of like a medical power of attorney should have full comprehension of the risks and consequences of a procedure before they

can be considered to have consented to it, right? You can't just tell someone what it's supposed to do. You have to tell them what could go wrong, you know, like otherwise you're not really consenting. Early medical consent laws did not do a good job in it of ensuring the full comprehension part. They were a huge step forward because now surges and doctors had to at least get an okay before agreeing to something.

In the early days of informed consent as a legal requirement, doctors would often just hand waivers to patients and brusically tell them you need to sign this before I can give you the treatment that you need, right? You're going to die unless I do this sign this paper without like they wouldn't actually tell them much, you know? Well, and he's doing all these like freestyle in off label surgeries. Yeah. Can you just do that shit these days?

Or does it have to be like this is a standardized thing that we do and this is. I mean, you can do there are like less regulated forms of cosmetic surgery in particular. So you don't have to like, you don't have to like, like get a bunch of doctors to sign off on it necessarily, but you do have to inform them of what you're doing, what it involves and the risks of it. And again, there's still issues with this today. You know, there's people who get breast augmentation surgery that aren't adequately informed by doctors, even very like, like prominent doctors of like the consequences of that and how it

can go wrong because it's kind of a grifty industry, a lot of the, but, but it's better now, right? Like, because at least if you, even if you kind of get screwed over by a doctor who doesn't inform you of the risks, you know, you're going in there for a surgery as opposed to just like, well, I'm just going to get a normal post pregnancy thing and he moves your clitoris. You know, like it is, it is, things have improved. Yeah.

Now we've already mentioned, yeah, so in the 1950s to the early 1970s, when James Burt performed a majority of his love surgeries, it was not uncommon for doctors to just do stuff to patients. We've already mentioned that episiotomies were commonly performed without consent, as were the repairs. But even in this lax environment, Dr. Burt stood out. It is one thing to perform surgery considered necessary at the time without consent. And that's not a good thing, but it's different from performing experimental surgery on a

patient to change their genitalia without informing them. There is a difference, right? It wasn't normal to get consent for these kind of procedures in the day, but also most doctors weren't doing what he was doing, you know? That said, the rather hazy status of consent in the medical field in the late 70s meant that Dr. Burt's admission that he'd been performing love surgery on thousands of random people did not have the impact you might expect. There were no criminal charges filed.

There was no mass campaign against his medical license. This was an era in which a man seeking a vasectomy would often be denied because the doctor thought he was too young. So it's a different time in terms of our attitudes towards these things. We'll talk about it a little later. There is a feminist outcry against his book, but it's not about consent. Because that's not really a big topic of discussion at the time. It's starting to become one by the 80s, it kind of is.

But that's not the main issue they have with it initially. James threw everything he had into a massive press campaign that followed the release of his book. He actually put his entire practice on hold to try and drum up interest in his love surgery from a write-up in the archives of sexual behavior. Quote, A month after the book's publication, the local Dayton Daily News ran an uncritical article about the surgery under the headline, Local Doctor Develops Corrective Surgery.

In the article, Burt claimed that nearly 100% of the women who had undergone love surgery were ecstatic with the results, and his wife and co-author Joan added that her husband had given women the opportunity to enjoy sex. The book provided Burt with in the surgery with increased exposure, and in 1976, he began offering it as an elective for $1,500 plus hospitalization costs. The two-hour-long surgery required five days in the hospital, at least a week of sitting on an inner tube and six to eight weeks without sex. Oh.

Yeah. Oh, God, it hurts. You know what doesn't hurt? The products and services that support this podcast won't cause you pain. They always get informed consent. So if you play me out, please. Bad. Bad time.

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Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Sorry, these women who are paying the $1,500 at least know what's going on, right? Yes, yes, they do at least know what's going on. You can argue, I mean, there are arguments to be made that he does not provide them with and he doesn't provide them with really adequate information about the consequences of this. But they do know that they're getting a surgery to rearrange their vaginas. So that's something. Now, that's not everyone even in this period that he performs the surgery on, which we'll talk about.

But he does now have people who are consenting to it. So that's a step forward. Now, at the same time, Dr. Burt started offering his love surgeries and elective surgery. It was illegal for physicians to advertise their services, or at least not illegal, but like it was the kind of thing you would get in trouble for. It was seen as a violation of the sacred trust place in doctors, a commercial profaning of the professionalism of the field. Despite this, Dr. Burt used his skill at manipulating the media to act as a more effective ad blitz than any billboard. He hired a New York City PR firm to publicize love surgery and he sat for interviews in Playgirl and on the Phil Donahue show. Quote,

The Playgirl article appeared a year before Burt began offering love surgery as an elective. And in addition to speaking with Burt, Murray also interviewed several women who chose to undergo love surgery. The women whose name Murray, the author of the Playgirl article, received from Burt all raved about love surgery. One woman told Murray, Sex was so natural now that she and her husband no longer had to work at it. A sentiment expressed nearly verbatim by another woman. A third woman told Murray she easily enjoyed multiple orgasms, sometimes so strong she nearly passed out. Murray interviewed women, including Burt's wife Joan, who told Murray that since having love surgery, she can now count on climaxing during sex. Murray, notably impressed with what these women told her about the surgery, considered it two points in the article putting herself on Burt's operating table.

Oh my God. Thanks Playgirl. What we do is we take this little carrot shredder and we file down your clit and then it's amazing. We just go to town on it, yeah. Jesus. So in 1977, a circuit court ruled that the AMA could not restrict its members from advertising. In 1982, the Supreme Court upheld this ruling, which is why the world of medicine works the way it does today. James Burt was well ahead of the trend. He was not the first doctor to remove the clitoral hood in order to enable faster orgasms.

He was not the first doctor to offer vaginal tightening, but he was the first doctor to go to the public and shout the benefits of these surgeries. By 1978, he claims more than 200 women had requested his love surgery with their own informed consent. Sort of. As I mentioned, from 1975 on, surgeons like Dr. Burt had to get informed consent before committing surgery on a patient, but the only sign that they had done so was a consent form with their signature. One sociological study from around the same period found that nearly 40% of patients who consented to various medical studies had actually known they'd signed consent forms to participate in medical studies. The Catholic hospital Dr. Burt performed his surgeries at, St. Elizabeth, started requiring him to use a special consent form specific to love surgery in 1979. Many of his patients after that period claimed they either did not sign consent forms or were not informed of what they were actually signing. Many of his love surgery patients were women who came to him asking for procedures to help with incontinence or post-pregnancy repairs.

Cheryl Sexton Dillon went to him in 1984 when she was 36. She'd come in for minor bladder surgery and been recommended a hysterectomy by her doctor, who sent her to James Burt, from a write-up in ABC News, quote, While she was under the knife, he performed a nine-hour operation, relocating her vagina and removing her clitoral hood. Dillon said she had no idea he would do more than a standard hysterectomy. Dillon, who in 1984 was a vocational teacher with three children, said afterward, I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in places I couldn't understand. She said even ordinary activities became impossible, sitting down wearing pants, riding a horse. Dillon could no longer have sex without excruciating pain.

Despite an understanding, husband, her happy marriage eventually fell apart. Fuck. It's bad. Cheryl did not initially know what had been done to her. She confronted Dr. Burt and asked him, What have you done? He replied, What are you asking about? It was not until she met with other doctors and was examined that she'd learned she'd been surgically mutilated.

In his press blitz and his book, James Burt presented story after story of satisfied patients. When journalists would reach out to him about his love surgery, he would connect them to women who raved about his love surgery. Those journalists never heard from Cheryl Dillon or from Janet Phillips. In 1981, she went to Dr. Burt for a hysterectomy meant to remove ovarian cancer. It was a significant enough procedure that she stayed in the hospital for 11 days after her surgery. As you might expect, the time was a blur, but she had strong memories of waking up several times to the sight of nurses around her. Clearly upset.

When she finally talked to Dr. Burt after her procedure and asked him if he removed all the cancer, he replied, Don't worry. Everything is fine. You are going to be okay. But she was not. For 11 days of uneven recovery, she was in agony. Once she left the hospital, the pain came with her. She had no control over her bladder. When she eventually went to Dr. Burt again and asked him what had happened, he told her he'd tacked up her bladder and that her muscles needed time to rejuvenate.

This did not happen. Instead, her incontinence caused chronic infections. She went on antibiotics, but every time she went off the antibiotics, the infections would return. Eventually, desperate for relief, Janet went to her trusted doctor again. She told him her vagina felt raw, that she experienced intense pain through vaginal intercourse. Dr. Burt responded that her husband must be bigger than I thought. She thought this was peculiar, but Janet did not yet suspect that a madman had rearranged her genitals without her approval. Who would?

She asked Dr. Burt to recommend urologist, since he hadn't expressed any willingness to actually help her. He warned her not to visit another doctor, telling her, I've already got you on the road to healing, and warning that another, less competent physician, might tear his surgery, which could cause life-threatening hemorrhaging. Frightened, but trusting her doctor, Janet continued to see Dr. Burt. After every visit, he would hug her and pat her on the back. She felt safe with him, and believed him when he said she was on the road to being healed. What the fuck?

This is so manipulative. Yeah, it's pretty outrageous. This went on for three years, during which she continued to experience agony and bleeding during sex. Dr. Burt advised her to, quote, keep trying, even if it's painful. She could not control her bladder and had to wear pads constantly. Her incontinence grew worse, and by April of 1984, he recommended another round of surgery to, quote, take the perineum down a bit.

Dr. Burt still insisted her complications were normal, a result of her hysterectomy. By this point, Janet's trust in her doctor had worn off. She stopped seeing him in 1984, but did not go to another gynecologist until 1985, because she was frightened she might bleed to death if he screwed up. Eventually, when the pain got so bad that she couldn't stand it anymore, she booked an appointment with a gynecologist named Michael Clark, from the love surgeon, quote. Clark informed Phillips her clitoris had been circumcised, and there was a good deal of scar tissue in the clitoral area that her labia had been removed and that her urine was collecting in a little pouch that resulted from the operation.

He also told Phillips her vagina had been redirected. To help her better understand what had been done to her, Clark drew pictures of typical female genitalia and then contrasted these drawings with her genitals. Years later, Phillips recounted how she heard the gynecologist she saw in 1985 say, as she cried in his office, that he did not know where to begin with this mess. Oh, my God. Redirected her vagina. The pouch, though, I think is maybe the worst.

Yeah, the book goes into significant detail about the pouch and about kind of the way like she's got constant infections. Nothing seems to work on them. She's either just permanently on antibiotics or she's always got an infection, just a nightmare. And so it was four years after her initial surgery that Janet Phillips realized her problems were not complications from her hysterectomy. She quickly made the decision to file suit against the love surgeon. Yes, fucking get him, Janet. Yeah, this is where the come begins to upence. Yes. Throughout this period, the early to mid-1980s, James Burt was busy himself.

He had fought a series of legal and PR battles to get metropolitan life insurance and blue shield to cover his love surgery as a necessary operation. It was covered by insurance for a while. When they refused, he filed a complaint with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission claiming that love surgery was a matter of women receiving equal medical treatment. It's an equal rights thing. Oh, my God. Yeah, when it comes in handy. Yeah, you'll perform a vasectomy on a man, but you won't let me carry out my experimental surgery that permanently damages people? This is bigotry. Yeah.

Millions of dollars and thousands of vaginas were at stake over the issue. To get insurance companies to treat his love surgery like a real medical treatment, he would have to convince the medical establishment that it was a real medical treatment. Dr. Burt spent much of the late 1970s and early 1980s conducting a series of studies and attempting to convince his colleagues to do the same. Whenever a researcher was willing, Dr. Burt would connect them to all of his positive cases, the women who'd reported good experiences after love surgery. He wrote his own reports and attempted to publish them, but journal authors consistently rejected them. This did change in 1983 when Dr. Burt and a colleague, Dr. Shram, succeeded in convincing a Finnish medical journal to publish his research on the efficacy of love surgery. Now, this was not a good study. He was only interviewing women that he already knew had good experiences with it, right? Of course.

That was an actual survey of all the women he'd given it to. But this study that he managed to convince the journal to publish claimed that after love surgery, 80% of his patients experienced an increased ease of ability to orgasm. In some of the most torturous and offensive logic in medical history, Dr. Burt attempted to claim that this meant his love surgery would reduce domestic violence. Oh, yeah. This is a bad part. Yeah. Sarah Rodriguez reports, quote, Burt and Shram reported that the surgery had an additional benefit. It reduced marital violence. According to their article, nearly 27% of those who participated reported wife beating before the surgery. After the surgery, Burt and Shram claimed there was a 100% decrease. Oh my fucking god.

100% decrease. The only reason people are hitting their wives is they're not having easy enough orgasms. That's it. That's why domestic violence happens. It's these loose pussies and these buried clits. Yeah. It's one of the most offensive things I can imagine putting to writing. It's bad. He's trying to outdo himself each time he writes a new sentence on paper. He's like, is this the worst one in the English language? Let's try again.

Let me tweak it a little bit. He ought to be, his typewriter should have been taken away for darn sure. His typewriter should have been taken away. That study aside, Dr. Burt's love surgery had virtually no acknowledgement in mainstream medical circles. Many experts decried what he was doing as dangerous and ineffective. He continued to practice and butcher for one simple reason. His love surgery was super profitable, made a ton of money for St. Elizabeth's hospital. Just his practice in general, he made them a lot of money. They knew, because he published it, that he had performed this surgery on several thousand women who had not consented to it.

And the worst part, well not the worst part, but the most infuriatingly ironic part of this is, St. Elizabeth's is a Catholic hospital. That's what I was about to say. It didn't allow abortions as elective surgery, but it allowed this guy to rearrange vaginas without the consent of his patient and defended him for years. This fucking church. How does that matter? I know Catholics are low-key the bastards of this one. The Catholic Church is. I was raised Catholic. Fuck those guys. Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, I was raised Episcopalian, which is just like Catholic with 10% less shame.

I would take 10% less. Less child molestation too. Although my specific chunk of the Episcopal Church might like literally the church I went to. So back in the early aughts, the Episcopal Church appointed a gay bishop in California. Hey. And it was like a big moment for like just Christianity in general. This acknowledgement from one of the largest chunks of Christianity in the U.S. that it wasn't inherently sinful to be homosexual. And it was a chunk of the Episcopal Church broke away and joined the African Anglican Church because they were not willing to say that gay people weren't bad.

And my like the actual building that I went to and my pastor was the guy who led that. Like I got interviewed as a kid by news networks walking out of like youth group classes. Oh my God. Like because we were like it was my church leading the charge against this gay bishop. It's cool shit Courtney. Moment of pride. Moment of pride. Yeah.

I was like 12 at the time, maybe 13. I didn't really know what was going on because I was pretty brainwashed. But yeah. Churches. It's good shit. You know what won't deny elective. Take you to church. Yeah.

Definitely won't take you to church. Capitalism is a fundamentally a religious philosophy as long as religion isn't profitable. It becomes religious when religion is profitable. But so I guess it hmm. Dr. Bert did make a lot of money for capitalism. Let's not think too much about that. Here's some ads. 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 on the gun badass 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 heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys 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.

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. All right, we're back. We're having just a real good time talking about this charming fella. There were calls to pull Dr. Burt's license and to stop the madness largely from feminists whose issue initially had less to do with a lack of consent than the fact that he framed his love surgery as necessary in order to turn women into, quote, sex pots. From a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, quote, In June 1978, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, the authors of the core feminist text, Our Bodies Ourselves, sent copies of a medical world news article about the surgery to an Ohio, the surgery of an Ohio gynecologist to 250 women's health organizations across the United States as part of their monthly mailing to these groups. Along with their article, the BWHBC enclosed a letter saying they were appalled by the vaginal and clitoral mutilation recommended by Dr. James C. Burt. To suggest the letter continued that women need vaginal surgery because they do not have orgasms with each penile vaginal intercourse is to inflict upon women male fantasies and assumptions about female sexuality. The BWHBC condemned the surgery as sexist and with their letters sought to pressure Burt to stop performing it.

So again, they're obviously in the right, but it is interesting that their issue is not a consent thing. It has more to do with just like how inherently misogynist the idea of the surgery is. Right, which also valid point. Perfectly valid point. Way to go, angry feminist. One point. It does note that like, it is worth noting that like, yeah, like that that shows you just the fact that consent isn't their issue, how little of a topic of discussion it is, even in the late 1970s. In late 1980, he took a job appearing on a weekly radio talk show for an hour every week. His show, Love Doctor, was billed as an opportunity for listeners to hear his take on sex, sexual and gynecological problems as well as his work in female reconstructive surgery. There was an immediate outcry against this, but that's sort of what the radio station had been banking on. They built him as controversial and press reports on his show repeated that word ad nauseum as if controversy was the apt term for people angry at a man who reinvented vaginas and tested out his new surgery without asking. Dr. Burt told his new listeners that traditional gynecology was deficient.

Of course. This guy has not met one structure or system that he didn't think was deficient. Yeah, because he knows best, you know, he's the love doctor. Throughout the mid 1980s, medical outcry against Dr. Burt continued to build a number of his colleagues filed private complaints against him. But as the New York Times reported, most doctors and nurses were too frightened of his influence to take any real action. Quote, gynecologists knew about Dr. Burt's surgery and recognized it when they examined his former patients. Doctors would say, Burt's done surgery on you, hasn't he? Says Joy Martin on whom he performed his surgery. We've all had Dr. Burt's patients and we've tried to undo the work he has done, said Dr. Robert Hilty, a gynecologist who was chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Kettering Medical Center in Dayton for 18 years. But we need the freedom to openly criticize without fear of legal retribution. So again, these guys are terrified because number one, the hospital where a lot of them work is backing this dude.

Number two, he's got money so he can destroy you if you come after him. He can destroy your practice. He's got a lot of power. The end for Dr. Burt began when a number of his victims, women who'd gradually pieced together the truth of what he'd done to them, started to make their voices heard. One of these women was Cheryl Dillon. It took her about a year from 1984 to 1985 to fully understand what had been done to her. After months went by with intense pain, she decided to seek a second opinion and went to a doctor at the University of Cincinnati. She recalled, he looked at me and called in one of the nurses and said, have you ever seen anything like this? He had repositioned my vagina and circumcised me. The doctor said he had never seen it anywhere except in African tribes. Dillon sued Dr. Burt in St. Elizabeth Medical Hospital for malpractice in 1985. She won by default but got nothing as the good doctor had no assets she could easily garnish.

Dillon settled out of court with the hospital for an undisclosed sum. Again, he's done like the thing that people with money do where you're able, you know, you know how to hide your money and shit if you're that kind of guy. The end finally came for Dr. James Burt as a result of the sheer number of women he abused. Like Cheryl Dillon and Janet Phillips, they all gradually, in fits and starts, figured out what had been done. One of the people who helped put the pieces together was another much better doctor, Bradley Busacco, an obstetrician who would eventually see some 150 of Dr. Burt's love surgery patients. His first encounter with the bad doctors where it came in 1986 as the result of a referral from a lawyer representing one of Dr. Burt's patients. The Chicago Tribune reports that, quote, by the time she found Busacco, her attorney said, she had been rejected by Dayton doctors

who did not want to treat a patient of Burt's, a powerful doctor in Dayton Medical Circles. She was in pain from bladder and urinary infections and from the friction of clothes against her genital area. And now at first Dr. Busacco thought the woman on his table was, quote, just a little off. But in time he realized with dawning horror what had been done to her. It was not an easy decision for him to go public against Dr. James Burt. Doctors kind of like cops tend to support each other and this was even more common in the day. Like it was very uncommon. There's this kind of white wall of silence. You support each other. You don't testify against each other. You don't go up against another doctor.

You're kind of all in this together, right? That's this attitude. I'm sure it's still pervasive today. It was even more so back then. But Busacco couldn't just sit back and let this keep happening. He signed a complaint with the state medical board that started the first official investigation into Dr. Burt. From an article in the Chicago Tribune, quote, After much soul searching and consulting with his wife, Peggy, Busacco decided he had a duty to help the women and turn Burt into state officials. His decision was consistent with his interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath,

which requires that a physician do no harm. I had talked with Lee Sambol. This is the lawyer a lot of these women work with. And told her I decided it would be very difficult for me to live if I didn't do it. And I told her I was going to cooperate with the state medical board and with her, Busacco said. The risks were significant. Busacco and his wife steeled themselves for what was to come. They knew they were challenging an unwritten code among medical professionals. Doctors don't turn on each other. I was only thinking that this was a clear moral decision.

There was no gray area here, Peggy Busacco said. Dr. Burt was guilty of monstrous acts and I didn't see that we had a choice. I guess I really felt we were on the right side and it was a clear choice and I never thought there would be that many negative repercussions. But there were. Dr. Burt immediately sued Busacco. He started pushing his influential connections, earned from a long career of making a lot of money for the hospital. Amount Washington plastic surgeon wrote an open letter criticizing Dr. Busacco.

Doctors he worked with would take him aside in private and advise him to drop the case, saying he'd made a mistake. A Hipp official at the university where Busacco taught, warned him that his job was on the line if he continued. Fuck. Jesus Christ. He goes, like, it's a significant act of moral courage for him to do this. It is not an easy thing. Quote, I had heard from several physicians I knew well and respected

who told me I was doing the wrong thing, Busacco said. The worst thing that could have happened is I could have been blackballed, probably that physicians would not have referred patients to me for second opinions. He told his wife that they might have to leave home for a new state if things went badly. But then in 1988, the news media caught up to the fact that something deeply fucked up was going on with the love surgeon. CBS ran a major investigation. They interviewed Dr. Busacco, who agreed to speak in the hope

that it would warn other women away from receiving this surgery. CBS also talked to Cheryl Dillon, who went into gruesome detail about her experiences on national TV. She told the world, we have to stop this man. I don't want to die young and have my daughter go to the same doctor. When he was reached for comment, James Burt called the report a conspiracy of lies. But by this point, he was unable to fight further. Dr. Burt had made the 1970s equivalent of more than $400,000 per year.

But following the decision of insurance companies to stop covering love surgery, his income fell substantially. From the love surgeon, quote, Rumors of Joan and James Burt's debts began to be more than speculation. In late September 1980, a local art gallery sued the couple for not paying for a bronze sculpture and two paintings delivered to the Burt home in January, 1979. The Burt's contended that the pieces were left at their home on an approval basis.

The gallery contended and the court agreed that the Burt's needed to pay the gallery $6,972.50, with interest for the art. In 1981, James Burt filed for bankruptcy, but it was dismissed. Why? Because they thought he was making too much money. He was filing for bankruptcy and was paying his debts. Oh, to protect himself. But they knew he was just hiding assets, right?

He's making less money now, he's having problems, but he's also clearly lying about his assets. Can we just say those women that started the P2 movement, they're the heroes of this episode. Yeah, I mean, definitely. The women who went to bat against this guy, the lawyer who collected all of these different cases and pursued it so doggedly,

the one doctor who finally decided to go public. And a lot of doctors made private complaints, but what makes Busacco noteworthy is he decided private wasn't enough. You have to go public with this, you know? Yeah, all of those people. And it says a lot that it took all of those people to put this guy down. It takes a lot.

It makes me think of, I don't know, obviously this is a super wretched version of events, but people doing experimental shit like that today are like those weird laser vaginal tightening things, like what's going on there? Yep. To make ends meet and to cover his growing debts, Dr. Burt Smith, the early 1980s,

teaching his love surgery to other doctors, all while attempting to gaslight his patients and fight off the first lawsuits brought against him. By 1988, the number of lawsuits and the number of verified victims had risen to several hundred. One malpractice suit against him included 33 women who said they'd never consented to genital reconstruction. Here's a selection of quotes from some of these women.

Right now, I feel I've been raped. I thought I would die. The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in places I couldn't understand. The way I was deformed, I couldn't have sex. I ended up going through three different corrective surgeries. You're raised to trust your minister, your policeman, and your doctor.

He was the one with a degree on the wall. I didn't think he would hurt me. And I don't know why he did that, unless he hates women. Oh, that's the most damning thing of all. Yeah, I mean, why else would you do shit like this, you know? You're playing God. I don't know. Yeah.

In December of 1988, the Ohio Medical Board labeled Burt grossly unprofessional and charged him with 41 violations of ethics. The board said that he regularly caused permanent physical damage due to his experimental and medically unnecessary surgical procedures. In January of 1989, Dr. Burt surrendered his license in order to avoid a medical board hearing that might have uncovered information even more damning than the stuff we've talked about today.

He almost immediately declared bankruptcy over his inability to pay the more than $21 million in malpractice lawsuits filed against him. From medical bag, quote, even after surrendering his medical license, Burt maintained his innocence. He blamed his situation on an unjustified crucifixion and an avalanche of yellow journalism. He insisted,

my medical practice has been conducted with great concern for the welfare of women. There are a lot of women with problems involving vaginal intercourse that are either not being adequately addressed or not being addressed at all. His son also came to his defense at the time, reporting, there are hundreds and hundreds of Dr. Burt's patients alive today whose marriages and lives were dramatically improved by his wholesome restoration to their fully functioning sexual responsiveness,

which most of those patients had previously enjoyed earlier in their marriages. That's it? That's all he got? No jail? Nothing? That's all he's got. No, he might still be alive in Florida, I think it is. He's still married? What's his marriage? No, no, no. She left him. He might have gotten married since, but she left him as soon as he lost his money. But also, she's kind of a bastard.

Yeah, she is. She's terrible too. She's not as terrible as him. She has an excuse. But maybe she had a moat, you know, she's like in her 30s. She has this come to Jesus moment. She's like, you know, people could change. Jones can change. People can change.

Yeah, and the fact that he kind of took her when she was so young, 46 and 21, it's not great. You know, it's better than marrying a teenager, but not by a whole lot. I'm sure she was not, she didn't have money. All the money was his. He performed his surgery on her. You know, it's a messy, I'm sure. My hope is, yeah, that she actually recognized that she'd been party to something terrible.

And that's why she left, as opposed to just being like, well, this is over. Time to like roll on to something new. I don't know. I wish her the best, but I also wish that she has some understanding of how she contributed to these harms. Amen. Yeah. So how you feeling, Courtney? I'm unclenching my vagina, letting it know that it is safe to come back out.

Yeah, he's old enough now that even if he gets out of Florida, he's pretty slow. He's not, he's not going to catch anybody. Oh, God. Yeah, you could probably take him down with like a solid whack from a broom. His bones have got to be brittle as hell by this point. We have what, you know, he should go out with a surgery. We have a special surgery for you, Dr. Burt. We're going to take your anus and put it where your mouth is.

Yeah, we've decided your body was not properly designed for all of the shit that you spew out of your mouth. So we're just going to redirect your digestive system out of your mouth. We're adding an extra tongue too, so you can really enjoy the results of the surgery. Here, sign this. Yeah, sign this. Yeah. Great. How's everybody feeling?

Feel good? Pissed. Yeah. I found this after, because I was doing the, there was a comment during the Kellogg episodes, because we were talking about like clitorectomase and how common they were in like the early 1900s, late 1800s as a treatment for masturbation. And I, someone had asked me, Miles asked me how common it was. And I said, it seems like it was pretty common, and I wanted to like double check that.

Anyway, I wound up on the Wikipedia page talking about clitorectomase in the United States. And it was like, this guy existed and he thought he could rearrange the vagina and it involved cutting the clitoris. And I was like, that sounds like a fucking story. And my God. It was. It sure was. Yeah. Can you imagine just your clit being so exposed, like a light socket, just when anything.

I mean, I can't imagine it in any way, but no, it seems like he had a lot of bad ideas. Yeah. It seems terrible. Oh man. Good stuff. Corey, you got any pluggables for us? Well, if that didn't completely turn you off of sex, head on over to private parts unknown podcast. I co-host with Sophie Alexandra, a delightful, hilarious person, and we have positive conversations about sex.

Check it out. Do that. It's delightful and not horrifying like this. Get your agency back. Robert, you want to end your podcast? No. No, I don't, Sophie. He's Robert Evans.

You can follow him on Twitter at I write. Okay. You can follow us at Bastardsbot on Twitter and Instagram and we'll be back next week with another horrible tale. I mean, we could just, we could just keep awkwardly podcasting for days. We could try to break a world record, Sophie. We don't have to end this now. I'd really rather not, but like go off. Well, you know, that shit.

I don't have anything else, Sophie. I don't have anything else. An awkward end to the podcast. Goodbye, sweet listeners. May flights of angels sing the away from the love doctor. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? 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 podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass.

And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a 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 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, 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. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.