The Ballad of Doctor Orgasm

in all of history. And my guest today is Sharine Lana Unash. You're back. I'm back, that's my own home. How do you feel about me gaslighting my audience about the fact that there are no other podcasts in order to keep them keep them locked into my content stream. I'm I actually found it very entertaining and ingenious in a way that I wasn't expecting. I think making them believe this is the only source, you know, like you're

making You're making yourself essential to them. You're you're there. Yeah. Yeah. People talk a lot about like the downsides of gas lighting, but nobody talks about how good it can be for making money with a podcast. I mean the reality the inverse the inverses like, the reality is there's so much to be consumed, but you just constantly telling them there isn't. I think that's pretty smart, I will say, though, the word ingenious doesn't make that much sense to me. This

is a side note completely just semantic. Uh. Thing I just realized is that genius is smart, but then ingenious should being not smart, just because of the way that prefix is usually used. But in this case it means even more smart, which is just my own. This is how my brain works now. I don't know how to have conversations. It's very I'm frustrated by ingenious and I'm

frustrated by inflammable. And I know there's like a small quadra of of grammar obsessives who have will explain how it completely makes sense that both of those words mean what they mean. UM, I don't care. Um I disagree with grammar regular I regular. I regular disagree with grammar often,

me too, me to um So. Sharine, you are the co host of the Ethnically Ambiguous podcast, and my friend and co worker, and um you know, and a really talented filmmaker and a talented filmmaker UM Award winning filmmaker. And there's really no other way to to just launch into this episode than by saying, how do you, um, how do you feel about orgasms? Oh, you're welcome for

booking you on this. Um, now I know why Sophie told me I was coming in blind and now I was thinking about what I was getting myself into before I turned on my microphone, before I agree to jump on this call. This was not anywhere in the realm of my Okay, well, I think orgasms are great. Um yeah, I wouldn't know though personally if we really want to get intimate here right off. Hasn't been even three minutes of this podcast. I don't know. I've never had one,

so wow. Okay, Well, um yeah, that actually is kind of on topic, Sharine, because um yeah, that's was I selected for this on purpose? Or is this this is this can't be a coincidence. Yeah, I just yeah, I thought we talk about grifters together, and our subject today is a grifter, so I thought you'd enjoy talking about him. Um, And I decided to open things with that incredibly inflammatory question. Um, because because it's my podcast and I'm a monster. Wait,

is the question relevant? Yes, it's extremely relevant. Yeah, we're we're talking about it. I who goes by the nickname doctor orgasm Um cute. Yeah. Uh So it's probably not a surprise to anyone listening or to any of us that that men and women have have very different orgasm experiences.

And this is rooted heavily and evolutionary biology. Um. And one of the things that illustrates this difference is the incredible density of studies and articles about studies, UM, all trying to unravel what's often described as like the mystery of the of the vaginal orgasm um. It's seen. Yeah, yeah, and it's I mean, this is really funny to be Okay,

I need to like be candid here. Sure, during this whole quarantine thing, like like the the me not having me not experiencing this feeling that everyone else seems to like relation has been this like thorn in my side for like most of my adult life, and I think this this whole entire quarantine time has I've been doing a lot of research on this to be honest about like why someone would have more trouble than others, Like what it means to actually let go and like experience

and receive pleasure like I have a lot of difficulty receiving good things, including like just like even just like feeling nice. And I've been this is this is actually hilarious that we're talking about this because I've been like genuinely like studying like like the ways to make myself feel okay enough to experience this thing that has always been this like this inside joke that everyone else understood. And I also think women talking about this pressure, they

don't talk about it enough. Like I don't think the society at large talks about women trying to overcome this pressure if they're not like already in the know of how to utilize or or like receive pleasure. And so anyways, I feel like I've done my homework, even without meaning to I had. I did not know this about you going into the episode. Um, but that's actually gonna be helpful in terms of trying to like parse this out

because this is a more confusing episode. It's not impossible this is a medical grifter um who claims to be able to cure women's who haven't who have trouble or an inability to have orgasms, And for a number of reasons, I'm fairly certain he's a grifter. Um, but you can find some people, some women who say that he helped them,

and it's a very complicated story. And it's more complicated due to the fact that, like we as I'm sure like your research has suggested, we don't really have a great we don't really have a great scientific lockdown on the vaginal orgasm, right like it's it's it's Um, there's a lot that's kind of up in the air about it from a research standpoint. I mean, everyone's just so different.

I think that's pot boils down to there's no like there's no just like I don't know to put to be crude, there's no like pump that you just like go at until something comes out of. It's not like I don't know, Yeah, men literally have a button that you can press. Yeah, exactly exactly. It's it's not for men or it's not for you know, people with people with uh, what's the most appropriate term to use? Wing dang doodles. Um, The wind dang doodle orgasm is a

pretty simple thing, right, Um. Yeah, it's it's straightforward as self explanator. But I think, like, uh, I don't want to get sorry, I keep taking over this conversation. No, no, no, I mean you're that that's why you're here. Please take it,

take it over. Like so when you're a boy, when you're like a prepubescent boy, like it's it's understood that you're going to be going through changes, that you're going to be going through puberty, and that means like exploring your body like a wet dream for a guy is a pretty standard point of puberty. For girls, you're never encouraged or even told to explore yourself, and that makes you feel even not even on purpose, but it makes

you feel a lot of shame about your body. And I was raised pretty sheltered and I didn't I remember really disliking my I was disgusted by my my genitals, like I didn't understand them. I didn't under like I there was a good portion of time before I like embrace my sexuality. And I'm still like overcoming those things now because of how you're raised as a girl just to like shut it down and to protect yourself and to not be a sexual being because that invites unwanted attention.

And so I think being raised like that and never like being encouraged to explore yourself, it leads to adult women needing to figure it out even after they've already had sex for the first time or the second time or the thirtieth time or whatever. So um, yeah sorry, no, no, no, no, yeah.

And it's it's one of the other things that it does is because there's so little conversation about this, and especially so little conversation that's like had an uh a kind of I don't know, um structured way like our our our educational system doesn't build this in and most

parents feel too awkward to really talk about it. And so because a lot of women don't ever get to have these conversations and grow up like with this thing of like I I don't know how to experience this, I don't know how to like get like like this this kind of mystery about their own bodies. Whenever there is a black hole of knowledge like that, it provides

an incredible opportunity to grifters. Um. It's the same reason why when you have a huge virus hit, right, like all these people start cropping up and and are able to make claims like oh, we know how I know how to cure this, I know how to treat this is because like this weird mysterious thing that people don't understand is a problem, and there's kind of a vacuum of official information and there's a lot of there's actually like a pretty decent sized industry of grifters who just

target women who are aren't able to orgasm or or

don't orgasm is often as they want to. Like that's a big Like even when I was in India, there were huge like tantric sex uh institutes, and like if you spent enough time in the towns where they were located, you would start hearing stories about the men who ran them, and they were like almost I'm not gonna say tantric sex is bad, but all of these all of these guys were basically cult leaders, right like like that's this um, it's just this this thing that happens um And yeah, yeah,

it's so unfortunate, and it makes me so enraged because I understand that like like like this desperation to just feel something that you're you're led to believe is like a very human, primal thing, and you feel you feel almost broken that you can't experience it, like coming from my experience, like I maybe I was just maybe it was it's like too late, or like maybe I wasn't raised correctly or maybe I know it's it's why can't

my body do this? And so you become an adult and you become so desperate to figure out how to do these things. I can I can see someone getting misled just because desperation will lead you to do that. And and it's it's this really um intimate and brutal thing to experience in with yourself. To to have that being taken advantage of is so criminal in my opinion, because it's just I'm just mad. Yeah, you'll get you'll

get time on the show. So, but before we get into this specific orgasm grifter, I do want to talk I wanted to go over a little bit of like orgasm research, um so just to kind of talk about like what's out there right now, which will help explain some things that are going to come into the story later on. So again, there's not a lot that's like ironed out known for sure about the vaginal orgasm. Some

researchers suggests that that they play a psychological role in reproducttion. Obviously, like there's no question about the role of the male orgasm and reproduction, but there is a question for um, yeah, the vaginal orgasm and the like. Uh. So the researchers who suggest a psychological rules say that basically, because these orgasms feel good, it makes people with vaginas want to have more sex, which leads to more babies. And this is like pretty logical, right. You can at least you

can see a through line there. Um. Yeah, so uh. One thing that these folks will point out is that solitary animals such as cats, have what's called male induced ovulation. Uh. And that's where an egg is only released uh from the ovary during sex. Um. And there is evidence that cats orgasm in case you were curious, we know they release prolactin, which is a hormone that human ladies get

flooded with when they orgasm and when they ovulate. Sixteen study I found suggested that the hormone release with the orgasm is probably an evolutionary holdover from when our ancestors moved from induced opulation and like cats, to the spontaneous ovulation that that we currently enjoy. Um. Enjoy might be the wrong word there, but like, yeah, so that's that's one theory. Um. And this study suggested that once ovulation

once like in our evolutionary timeline. When ovulation stopped depending on like a man or you know, a penist getting in there. Uh, the clitterest moved from inside the vaginal canal to its current position. Um. And one piece of good news from all of this is that the clitterest, evolutionarily speaking, is not going to go away anytime soon. Um. The penis evolves from the same part of the embryo. So as long as uh, there are wing dang doodles,

there will be clitter e. So that's good news. If anyone was worried about losing those in a couple of thousand years sciences, yeah, yeah, I was concerned. It also means that men are going to keep their nipples. Yeah, yeah, I was worried. Yeah. Well no they are not. They absolutely are not a lot of uses for male nipples. Um.

You can hang stuff off them, that's mostly yeah. So uh yeah, I think that's that's good background to get because the medical grifter we're talking about today, UM is a doctor who claims to be able to vastly increase the likelihood and quality of women's orgasms, and he does this by injecting their own blood back into their labia. UMU. Yeah, this is probably nonsense, although it is not definitively nonsense, because the exact kind of treatment this guy is using

is still something that's that's being studied. Um. But this is a case where there it's possible there's some validity to what he's doing medically, but the doctor himself is absolutely a piece of ship and a grifter. Um. And the fact that he has a huge populic Yeah. Yeah, more I'm intrigued. Yeah, this is a This is an

interesting one. So the fact that this doctor has a sizeable population of interested customers is doing large part to the fact that, as we kind of lead this episode talking about vaginal and cluatoral orgasm are actually pretty rare. People with penises report orgasms about of the time and heterosexual encounters, while people with vaginas report orgasms only about fifty percent of the time. Um. The reasons for this are hotly debated, but they actually kind of seem pretty

obvious to me based on just the data. So, for one thing, age, education, and income all increase the likelihood of orgasm um for people with vaginas. Yeah. And this suggests that knowledge and particularly kind of knowledge of one's self and one's biology increases your odds as a vagina have r of having an orgasm. Uh yeah, yeah yeah. Um. Only about of people with vaginas orgasm from casual sex,

while seventy orgasm and committed relationships. And to me this suggests the same thing, which is that orgasms are at least somewhat a project of knowledge, and having a partner who knows your bits increases your chance of having an orgasm.

And and I will say I didn't like say the word masturbation earlier when I was talking about like exploring your body or anything, but I do think the fact that we don't talk about women masturbating and like we're not really like they're I mean, like now they're like we're being more progressive. There's a certain section of like youth that's like really all about talking about it. But when I was growing up, I didn't masturbate. Like I didn't know how. I didn't know. I still low key

don't really know how. So because it's just I'm not I'm still trying to understand like like how to receive pleasure. I'm so bad at receiving anything that alone like a compliment or like like how much is to receive a fucking orgasm for myself. Um. But I think our obsession with only talking about male pleasure and male masturbation leads women to never understand like they don't have the knowledge about how to feel good sexually because they're not encouraged

to it, and there there's just so much shame around it. Um. And even like I remember watching porn when I was like a teenager purely as like studying it, like I just wanted to understand what it, like, what people were up to, Like what was this thing I was missing? And every time they would show like a woman masturbating, it was this like just crude, like just like it was just so it wasn't good enough, Like it didn't it didn't work, you know what. I don't know if

that makes sense. It's just it made seem too easy. Um. And uh, sorry, I keep getting distracted. I'm just no, no, no, I mean bringing up a lot of ship Robert yeah, ship Yeah. I mean, And you're not You're you're very far from alone in that, because, like you know, the data suggests like this is a hugely common problem. Um. Just in general, people who have vaginas not orgasm ng as often as they would prefer. UM is very common and there are actually quite a lot of women who

have what's called female orgasmic disorder UM. And that's exactly what it's sounds like. It's an inability UM to orgasm. Uh. And it is also incredibly treatable. Sex therapy is successful of the time. UM Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is a thing that exists. There's treatment options in the data suggests that they are very there. They are very often effective. Um. But those numbers still leave a lot of unsatisfied people with vaginas out there. Uh. And unluckily for them, doctor

Charles Reynolds is around to take their money. Charles Reynolds is the inventor of the O shot, a controversial therapy meant to correct a lack of vaginal orgasms. Dr Reynolds has been branded doctor Orgasm by some and he's a big old piece of ship. Now, if you've not heard about his O shot, you may have heard about his other groundbreaking medical treatments, the vampire facial. This is the guy who did the vampire facial. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's

the same guy the vampire breast. Anything. But like coming from a guy, I'm already wary of anyone that's like I can give this, I can give women more orgasms, Like what did a woman know the most intimately how to do that? Like I'm already like I'm intrigued only

because like I'm so fascinated by the subject. But I think just by default that that information, that claim coming from a guy is already kind of like lose his credibility for me because he will never understand one a vagina is capable of you know what I mean, But I don't know. Yeah, you won't, you won't change your opinion on that over the course of this episode. Can't Wait.

So in addition to the vampire facial and the vampire breast lift, Dr Reynolds is the inventor of the pre shot, which is a needle that you shoot into your dick to make your dick the orgasm better. UM. So he's

he's he has picked, he's picked a path for himself. UM. And his path is his path is sucking people's blood and then shooting it back into pieces of them to gain kind of unclear medical benefits Like that's this the guy's thing, um, and the specific medical treatment that he is involved in, and that all really um, all of his His his treatments are one second, the specific medical treatment that he focuses on that kind of all of these different things are a type of is called platement

rich plasma plasma injection or PRP injections or PRP therapy. Yeah. Yeah, it's a mostly when it comes to like skin rejuvenation and yes, increasing cell turnover and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's not. I don't think it's like I think there's still as far as I know, like the very still out as far as very much. Yeah, we'll talk about that.

It's certainly grown more popular over the years. UM And and for folks who don't know you're familiar with I mean, I guess a lot of people have are somewhat familiar with this. But the basic idea is that a patient's blood is drawn out and then put through a centrifuge, and the centrifuge concentrates all of the platelets, which are the blood cells that are largely responsible for the fact

that your blood has healing functions. UM. Those platelets are then sucked back up and then injected into damaged or diseased body tissue in order to stimulate healing. UM And obviously, it makes sense that people would try this as a therapy, right, Like the there's logic to like, oh yeah, I can see how if you concentrate like the heally parts of the blood and then shoot it into wounded Yeah, maybe that'll work. It's it certainly falls under the list of

medical treatments. I was like, yeah, it was worth a shot. People should have given it a yeah, well we'll give it a go. Yeah. But it got really popular just with like celebrities and stuff like, not like wounded or damaged skin. It was just like to increase or too. It was like marketed as like a you a youthful

like fountain of thing exactly. And it started. The very first PRP therapies were in sports medicine UM and largely kind of as a way for professional athletes and the like to more rapidly heal from rotator cuff injuries and sort of similar you know, wounds, the kind of stuff that like, you know a lot of times like you pull an ankle, you fuck your rotator cuff up, you funk up a knee, and like it kind of stays

a little bit fucked up forever. And so this was kind of they were trying to figure out how to deal with that, right, Like, maybe we can accelerate the body's healing so you can actually get this ship fixed. Yeah, and there are there are some professional athletes and stuff who swear by this treatment. The actual scientific data on

how well it works is very muddled. I found a systematic review in the Cochrane Library that analyzed nineteen studies on PRP therapies, and when they did a bias analysis, only three of these studies were judged to be at low risk of bias because obviously a lot of people with financial interests in PRP therapy working fund studies into

whether or not PRP therapy works. Um. But even when they kind of excluded the biased studies, the existent studies didn't show evidence of any significant effect from PRP therapy. There is some evidence that it might help reduce pain, but that's really about all we can say conclude sibly. There's a decent amount of evidence that it can help reduce pain when you're healing from an injury. UM in

certain circumstances. There's really not nothing hard to support the claims that it accelerates healing UM, which doesn't mean that it doesn't because this is still pretty new, but like the the jury is definitely still out and of course there's there is no clinical I want to get this right out of the way. There's zero clinical evidence that it helps with work as ms that like like not not a drop. That is just a wild yeah progression of like yeah, like where else can I put blood? Yeah,

people are someone's blood Jesus man. Yeah, and it put One of the things he's kind of taking advantage of is that, surprisingly enough, like labial tissue, you can actually do this kind of stuff and it doesn't really hurt, um because the place that he injects it into there's actually not a lot of like you don't have a ton of of you don't know, like all of that area isn't super sensitive, Like there's actually parts that aren't

because like it's meant to tear apart during childbirth and stuff. Um, the way you word it that was very great. Yeah

that's not nice. Yeah, sorry, but it's like this is where we all came from, Like we all I could I could see how someone can rationalize this because when you are when you're orgasming, when you're supposed to receive pleasure, like all the blood is supposed to rush there so that I could kind of rationalize this, this this concept of like, well, if you're having trouble, then I'll just put blood where they're you're supposed to have blood, and

then and then everything is solved. But it's not something yeah, like all of the best bullshit medicine. There's a level to which it makes kind of intuitive sense where you're like, oh, yeah, this I can if you explain the idea of the treatment to someone, just a random person on the street, I think most people be like, Okay, yeah, I can see how that might work. Like it's not inherently nonsense, you know, the data suggests that it is, but it's

the the idea itself. It does kind of fall under the yeah, probably it was worth trying, right, you know? Oh my gosh. You know what won't inject your own blood back into your genitalia. The products and services that support this podcast have never done that, unless we are running an ad for for the O Shot, in which case please don't get that until you finished listening to the podcast. We're back. Uh Okay, who were so? Speaking

of journeys? Before I start talking about how the O shot came to be, I want to talk a little bit about the clinical background of its inventor, one Dr Charles Runnolds, a k A. Doctor Orgasm. Now. I became aware of Dear Charles through the writing of one doctor Jin Gunter, an O B G y N and an author of a book called The Vagina Bible. She is professionally angry at scammers who push nonsense medicine on the vaginas of the world, and she is not a fan

of Dr Reynolds. I love her already. Yeah, yeah, she's she She seems to know what she's talking about. Um I she certainly has the professional qualifications to to be talking about this subject. Absolutely. I just love an angry woman, you know. I just love an angry woman, That's all it is. Yeah, she's really angry, and I low key not even low key because like a third of my content is based on it. One of my very favorite genres of things on the Internet is like furious doctors

writing about like medical scammers. I just I love that ship. Yeah. Um so, as Dr jin Gunter points out, um, doctor Reynolds, the the doctor Orgasm is an internal medicine doctor and internal medicine doctors, uh, their training does not focus very much on the vagina. During his medical school, Charles Reynolds

likely spent a pretty minimal amount of time studying gynecology. Uh. He may have done a few months of residency at a gynecological clinic, but that would have been the most So if this orgasm doctor doesn't have a background in gynecology, what's his background in? Well. On his own website, Dr Renalds says that his first love was medical research, and he lists his chief medical hero as doctor Verne Enforceman. In nineteen nine, Enforceman performed the very first heart catheterization

on his own heart. Uh, and he this vern Enforcement is a legitimate medical badass. Reynolds writes that this guy quote tied the nurse down and cast his own heart, then walked up three flights of stairs in order to photograph it, and this is largely accurate, although the truth is that the nurse agreed to let Dr Forceman tie her up because he needed clean instruments and she had access to them, and he might die doing this and

he didn't want it to get in troubles. It was kind of like they were kind of doing this so that if he died doing this, she wouldn't get blamed for it. Um, that's why he tied her up. But yeah, it's a cool story. It's actually like a really awesome medicals. Yeah. Enforceman had this theory about how you could have catheterize a heart, and he had been denied attend permission to

attempt it because it was seen as too dangerous. So he decided he had to work it out do it on himself, and he worked at a deal with the nurse so that they could do this and not endanger her life and career. Um. Why Dr Runold's idolizes Dr Forceman will become clear presently. For right now, it's important for people to know that Forceman spent a lot of his life reviled by the medical community for his irresponsible self experimentation. He was only recognized as a genius after

World War Two, when he finally received the Nobel Prize. Dr. Forceman spent most of his life as a humble, grunt level medical practitioner. He was a German military doctor in World War Two, so he worked with like the Nazi army, but he was like treating wounded people. Um, which is I guess the least objectionable job you could have. Uh, in Nazi Germany. Um. And then he was like a town doctor. Like he was like a small town like

family physician for years and years and years. Um. And after he won the Nobel Prize, he was actually offered a fancy job running a German cardiovascular institute. Uh. And he turned this down because he felt like he didn't know enough to do the job well. Like he he was like he was a very humble man. In other words. Um So Dr renalds idolizes this man. And there's a lot to idolize in Dr Forceman Nazi service aside, just

like it's it's it's a cool medical story. Um. And when Reynolds first got his m D, his desire was to be a medical researcher. Now, I don't have a tremendous amount of detail about Dr Reynolds's early life, and most of what we do have comes from an article in The Guardian that will not bad is largely just repeating what Renald says about his own early life. Uh. He says that as a teenager he endured horrific cystic acne. Um. This is not what most of us was described as

bad acne. I'm sure we all have a bad acne story. He was one of those people whose, like, whole face was just this oozing, painful mass of sores. Um. He claims it was. Yeah, and I had there was at least one kid at my school who had this kind of acne. And it did. It did seem like a nightmare. Um, it's brutal. Yeah. Reynolds claims that his acne was so bad that he forgot what his own nose looked like. Um. And yeah, there's not many worse ailments you could have

as a teenager. This was obviously disastrous for young Charles's personal life. He recalls praying to God, if you could make me attractive, I will find something good to do with it. Um. And luckily for him, a miracle cure soon did arrive. Dermatologists treated his skin with X rays, which cured the cystic acne, but left him with a lifetime of melanomas, which have required constant treatment in order

to stop from turning cancerous as an adult. Dr Reynolds now claims that his childhood battle with cystic acne gave him enormous compassion for people suffering from incurable conditions. The pain of what I have called the hidden population. Uh. Now, if this story is true, it's certainly easy to see how it could have sparked his youthful desire to embark on a career is a medical researcher, and that's exactly what he did, but unfortunately he was not good at it.

In two thousands, or he got approval to conduct the study on the efficacy of a new smallpox vaccine formulation. He got approval to do this, but he did not get approval to conduct the study on homeless people. However, Oh my god, yeah we're getting God, Oh my god, what a piece of trash. Yeah, yeah, he's not great, Like, okay,

I could have sympathy. I was just thinking, like, yeah, I have a I have the emotional depth to to understand empathy and to sympathize with someone that is that that has really bad acne and is going through a hard time self confidence or whatever. That does not give you a fucking green light to Oh my god, what a fucking piece of ship. Yeah he's a real piece of ship. This study is is bad, Like, oh boy, howdy? Um so he Uh. Basically, it's expensive to recruit subjects

for a vaccine study and it's hard. Um, but tricking hoboes into letting you test drugs on their bodies is easy. Um, and that's kind of just what he did. Uh. And he did he did get approval to conduct the study on people from a homeless shelter after he had already started testing them. Um. Yeah, so he filled her forgiveness remation. Yeah. And there's a lot of other shadiness. So he filled his sample, grew up with men and women from a

local New Orleans homeless shelter. I think twenty two of them. Uh. And, as the FDA later wrote, quote, you enrolled twenty one indigent persons from a multi service center for the homeless into either study. Uh. Only after enrolling eight of these subjects, you received approval from the Institutional Review Board IRB to

enroll vulnerable subjects as described below. Regardless of the irby's decision to reprove the enrollment of vulnerable populations, persons utilizing the Multi Service Center for the homeless were unsuitable for consideration for these studies for many reasons, including, but not limited to the following. These individuals weren't suitable because they were economically and or educationally disadvantaged. Some subjects could not

understand or follow the protocol requirements. For example, subjects in IT list, a couple of subjects did not understand how to measure his her temperature in order to complete his her daily diary, as they reported body temperatures raising from ranging from eighty four degrees fahrenheit to So one reason why this was bad is because like these people had to keep data on themselves in order for the study to make be have any value, and they just weren't

competent to They didn't have the kind of education to do that. Um the FDA has complaint continues. One requirement for doctors doing these sorts of studies is that they complete a vaccine risk Assessment questionnaire at least six times during the study. The questionnaire asks about the health and medication use of people to study subject lives with. This is obviously a project for homeless folks who live in a center because their household contacts include every person including

staff and volunteers at that center. UM. So this is a huge problem because again, if you're testing medicine on people to see if it works, you have to know what other medications they're taking. You want to limit and control for that, and have no fucking idea what people at a homeless center, many of whom are addicted to drugs themselves, are actually taking and you don't know what they had the option to take. You just can't. It's

a bad group to use for a study like this. Um, Like, there's the moral problem of of these of going of conducting a study in these folks because a lot of them have mental illnesses that mean that they can't really provide informed consent um. And then there's also the fact that, like you can't get good data out of these people because like you can't control free of the things you need to in a stay. There's a whole lot of reasons this was the worst way to conduct to study. Yeah,

there's there's no upside. The upside is that it's cheap and it it's easy if you don't care about actually performing a good study. Um. But that that that like kind of the gates his entire like ethos that he's like self proclaimed right, like it just yeah, yeah, it sure does. So there were a lot more problems too,

Like we're not even done with this ship. Dr Rerunnold's got his his institution research board to approve him to have an impartial witness observed the informed consent discussion that he got while recruiting these homeless people to act as

guinea pigs. So that was how he got He got permission after the study started to use homeless people as test subjects, and the way he did this was by promising to have an impartial witness who can make sure that these people were providing informed consent um And obviously the purpose of this was to avoid a ghoulish situation where mentally iller drug addled individuals were tested with experimental medications in exchange for money without understanding that they'd agreed

to be tested tested with experimental medications in exchange for money. That would be a horrible thing. Um, So thank god he had an impartial witness, right, Wow, thank god, you're glad he had an impartial witness, right, motherfucker. But he had acne. He had really bad acne though, so he's allowed to do this. Oh my god, I hate him. I hate him. You want to hear who was impartial witness was? Yeah, another homeless person that he was testing drugs are. Oh my god, he's such a piece of ship.

Like pure evidence. This is pure evidence of him repeatedly taking advantage of those who are vulnerable. Like whether it's women that can't orgasm or people that like have no other choice, you're still taking advantage of people that are vulnerable. And like that's like on a one grift? What a one come on? Yeah, and it gets worse, Like this is honestly one of the worst scientific studies I've ever

heard of anyone conducting. So obviously, people who are conducting proper medical studies are supposed to do a lot of research to understand the pre existing conditions of members of the study, So like you look at how their bodies doing before you start putting meds on them. This is to avoid endangering people and to ensure that like the folks conducting the study learning as much as possible about, you know, how certain medications affect people with different health conditions.

So obviously are all of Dr Reynolds's patients underwent e k G s and blood and urine samples. But Charles just didn't tell his i RB about any of the adverse health conditions that he revealed in this process. Um, so a bunch of people were found with heart problems, he just didn't say anything about it. Uh And in fact, one of his subjects after being medicated, was hospitalized for chest pain. And he also didn't tell the IRB about that, um for more than two weeks. Um, so that's all

really bad. Um, it's it's horrible, Like this is one of the worst. Like if you're if you're a science person, read read the the FDA's complaint about this study because it's shocking how bad it is. The gist of how is he still allowed to practice medicine after this? Like that's what well, that's what we're bill are for. Oh

my god, he was yeah, so um yeah. The gist of all this is that Dr Reynolds used homeless folks as test subjects and took the actions to obscure the fact that many of them didn't understand what was being done to them. He covered up their illnesses, all of

this horrible stuff. In two thousand eight, the f d A investigated him for this and initiated disqualification proceeds against him, and he was disqualified from working as a clinical investigator in two thousand nine as a result of this investigation.

UM Dr Jim Gunter explains what that means. Quote, getting disqualified by the FDA means a clinical investigator has repeatedly or deliberately failed to comply with applicable regulatory requirements, or the clinical investigator has repeatedly or deliberately submitted false information to the sponsor or, if applicable to the f d

A in any required report. A disqualified clinical investigator is not eligible to conduct any clinical investigation that supports an application for a research or for marketing permit for products regulated by the FDA. So he gets banned from being a medical researcher basically because he's so wildly irresponsible at it um. Yeah, and obviously because he's a subject of this show, so we know what happens. We know what happens.

He gets famous for the vampire fasial like he didn't have a he didn't he didn't have a come up and you know what I mean, This is not the come up as show. This is enraging. This is not the come up as show. Although if we were to really dig into it, we could come up with a good since this is an orgasm and based episode, a good come joke based on the word come up. And but I'm going to leave that to the listener to put together in your own head. You know, what. Yeah.

I didn't think of that when I said it out loud, but it's pretty there. You know, take it, take it for yourself, makes the joke your own, you know. Yeah, this is a d I O Y. The comedy in this podcast is very often d I Y. It's the only podcast out there, so take what you can get. Yeah, we're like the IKEA of jokes about bad orgasm doctors. UM. Not a lot of money in being that. I don't

know why we took this path anyway. Uh yeah. Obviously being at the subject of this podcast, Dr Reynolds did not learn it, goddamn think from his failures or from his punishment. After he gets banned from conducting medical research because of his how horrifically irresponds sable UM, he gets fined in two thousands, also in two thousand nine, five thousand dollars by the State Board of Medical Examiners of Alabama for the misuse of hormone replacement therapy after he

massively overdosed two women with testosterone UM. Yeah. Yeah, and he defends his actions by saying that the hormone doses helped his patients um, just as he defends his actions with the vaccine trial by saying that he didn't know the subjects were homeless. Um. Yeah, he's he's just a liar. Um. Now Yeah. Dr Reynolds again, when he gets talked about his misuse of hormone replacement therapy because he overdosed women with distosterone, UM, he will say that like it helped

his patients. And I wanted to know, like what he meant by that, And eventually I was able to find a video posted to his website, which is called the Cellular Medicine Association, titled who is Charles Reynolds? Um. The association is run by him, and he made this whole video. He doesn't acknowledge that he was fined for doing this, but he does talk about how he started doing testosterone

therapy for women. UM. And he again doesn't acknowledge that he hurt people doing this, but he does say that, uh, it gave them such high libidos that their husbands couldn't keep up. Uh and so he started injecting their husbands with testosterone. UM. And I can't tell you if that happened or not, UM, but I can tell you that doesn't sound like good medicine. I'm not a doctor, but Um, that seems like a bad medical call. Uh so yeah.

Renalds says that in two thousand and ten he started hearing about PRP therapy, which was then again mostly the province of like sports medicine, although gynecologists had started using the technique to inject platelets around the urethra of women who experienced urinaryan continents. And it does seem to help with that. Um, there's some some I don't know if there's hard studies, but I know a lot of people say it helps with that, and I haven't seen any

reason to believe it doesn't. UM. But I'm gonna let Dr Reynolds himself explain what happened next. This is this is Dr Charles Reynolds explaining what happens after he realized that uh PRP therapy UM was was was being used on people's faces. Back in two thousand and ten, someone brought to me the centrifuge that had been used by the orthopedic surgeons to prepare play ridge plasma for the knees and by the dentists and wound care wound healing.

Excuse me, so, and the person bringing the centrifuge says, this has been FDA approved for preparing plasma play towards plasma, and if you use it, of course it's blood. The blood's not FDA approved blood. The FDA doesn't approve your hair, your urine, or your saliva or your blood, but they have to approve the device that makes the plastma to

go back into your body. So he says, this has been FDA airproof to prepare plasma to go back into the body, and it's been shown two calls, new tissue growth, new blood flow, new volume, and there's never been a granuloma or serious infection or serious side effect from play

ridge plasma. You should try it in the face. So I thought, oh, this is wonderful because if this works in the face, I mean instantly, because I was tuned into the sexual problems, I thought, if this works in the face and does all those things, then this should help the genitalia. So he's like, yeah, I saw that this worked in the face, and I was like, well, if this helps people's faces, then it clearly it helps

their genitals. Which nobody says that about anything, Like I'm not like, well, because my straight razor helps me get a nice shave, I should clearly shave my dick with a straight razor. You don't, my god, Like what a line of thought that makes so much sense, just to jump from face to dick. Contact help my eyes, they

must help my paenis. But like I will say, um, I didn't know what he looked like before watching that, and I am like a little bit more than needed to be upset, Like I I'm more upset than I wanted to be. That the fact that he's not unattractive, Like he's conventionally attractive, and it's proven that people trust people that are attractive, like someone if someone is is good looking, if they're tall, if they're built, if they're

if they have a charming way of speaking. He has a deep voice, he has like a tick, a southern what's that word, like twang or whatever to his like like he he had like a drawl, like like he is presenting himself as an alpha, and you're going to trust that if you're vulnerable, like like even if he was like that just makes me so I wish he wasn't. I just but like it makes sense. The fact that he's gone away with it makes sense a little bit

more than did before. Now in my brain, you know, what you're saying is exactly why I think we should just mandate disfiguring facial surgery for all American citizens. Um. And you know who's here to help with mandatory disfiguring surgery is our sponsors at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, who have developed a brand new knife missile that is just gonna guarantee nobody gets trusted on the basis of their attractiveness ever again. So please support Lockheed Martin in its

quest to disfigure all of us. Ye enjoy these other products. So we're back again. I know a lot of doctors actually listen to this podcast. We have a lot of doctor fans, and I'm interested in their takes on the clip that we just played as a layment. It seems like competent medical researchers don't say if this works on the face, it must be good for helping people. Fuck, But I'm not an m D, so I'll leave that to y'all. My sister is a doctor, and I know she would shed all over this. Like I it seems

like a reach. I mean, like I want to bring this up really quick, Like, do you know, I don't know if the movie contagion had a huge up surge recently. Uh, I don't want to. I guess this is like a spoiler, but it's been around long enough then who cares. At the end of the movie, like the cure comes about because the lead researcher like injects herself with the medicine

or like or with the vaccine. And my sister as a doctor, and I'm sure many doctors that watched this movie like it's I know it's a movie, but it's like kind of the same idea of like what this person Dr Reynolds was like inspired by. It's like using yourself as a martyr and using yourself as like this hero to save the day. And and realistically that is bullshit, Like that is it's a cool story, but it's not a medically or or factually sound and it's really dangerous.

Like one medical professional would do that and he was like, I don't know, Okay. The troubling part is that there have been a couple of really groundbreaking medical professionals who advance medical science because they were willing to dangerously experiment on themselves. And it's it's kind of threading a needle

that's maybe too fine. For most people to want to thread to say that, like, yes, people who were willing to do that have advanced the frontiers of knowledge before, and also to say, but it's still a bad idea and we should have moved past that. Like right in nineteen fucking twenty nine, some doctor who can't get approval is like, well, fuck it, I'm just gonna try to stint my own fucking heart. And it works, and it's

good that it did. Um, but also that was like a century ago and we should not have to do that anymore. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. I totally agree that, Like there are some cases where it's really been like groundbreaking and progress medicine. But I think the fact that this doctor like was is caught up in that particular narrative. It's a kind of telling of the kind of doctor he was even trying to be, Like he's more consumed with the story, He's not really

consumed with the medicine. You've hit on an incredibly important point that he's consumed with the story, and the story gets wilder from here on out. So strap in sharene It's gonna be fun. Yeah. So, as that video goes on, Dr Reynolds goes on to say that he read a lot of papers. I think he says thousands, and I don't think there are thousands which showed that PRP treatments were effective in reducing signs of aging on the face, which again, yeah, the evidence and also the evidence is

not overwhelming on that um. And so as a result of reading a lot of papers, he decided to start experimenting on himself with PRP facial treatments before he started shooting stuff into other people's genitalia. Now, since he was legally barred from conducting clinical trials, he just drumped right into experimenting on people with his own PRP facial treatments. Uh. Dr Reynolds began marketing them under the trademark name Vampire Facelift UM, and I sorry, I got it wrong early.

I said he's responsible for the vampire facial. His trademark name is the Vampire Face Lift. And you will see when people advertise that they do vampire facials, they're actually tech like legally ripping him off, um because his is the vampire facelift. Yeah, I don't care, but it's from a legal standpoint, it's important. He had acne he did

have acne. Now in this video, he claims that coming up with he decided he had to trademark this thing before there was really any hard evidence that it worked, because, uh, that's this would be important for him being able to responsibly treat people. See if he just called his PRP for his story and for his finances, if he just called He says that if he just called this like PRP facial by the names other people were using, vampire therapy was a common name, then any bullshit doctor could

claim to be providing his therapy. And what if they accidentally hurt someone? So he claims that he had to trade market so that he could avoid people getting hurt. Um, Yeah, that nonsense, But I think that's nonsense. Vampire Facelift is a good media ready name, and trademarking it allowed him to license his treatment to other doctors and make passive income from thousands of practitioners that he trains, often in

online courses, who basically act as franchise ease. Uh. Interestingly enough, Charles denies uh that anything he does is that what he does is anything like franchising. So he says that like this is not franchising. What I'm doing, and in the same breath that he claims it's not like franchising, he compares the name vampire Facelift to the trademark golden arches of McDonald's, which is amazing. Yeah, he's it's pretty

That whole video is pretty fun to listen to. So Charles insists the whole reason that he did this was to ensure a consistent standard of care and insist that everyone abide by the same stringent practices he does, and spoilers someone advertising a knockoff vampire facial like a year ago, got two people infected with hiv um and they weren't people that runld That trade had rain so he was like, well, look, this is what I'm saying, Like, these people are using

a knockoff and they got folks sick. But it's like, yeah, they got folks to buy their treatment by using the name that was as close as possible to the one you use. Um. Yeah. Anyway, So for the next couple of years, Dr Runnelds made a name for himself and a new fortune as the inventor of the vampire Facelift. His dream of injecting people's blood back into their own vagina as though had to lay dormant for a while

as he grappled with fame and expanded his clinic. But then, as Dr Rynolds tells it, one day, fate in the form of his girlfriend forced his hand. Oh buddy, we are heading in for one of the most irresponsible stories of a medical experimentation I I can conceive of, and it is a fun one. So as Dr Rynolds tells this story, uh yeah, there's a number of different versions of the story that he's he's given. I prefer the one written up by a journalist from The Guardian who

interviewed Runnels, and I'm going to read that now. Quote Charles Rynolds. Lover's surprised him at his office, demanding that he inject blood into her clitteress as a Valentine's Day present. She hiked up her dress, hopped onto the exam table, and motioned for Rynolds to put on his head lamp. She explained that she'd been watching him inject his own penis with blood for about a year, and that while his bigger and stronger erections had been fun, she'd grown

tired of the one sided sexual enhancement. It was her turn, so Runolds bowed between her legs, numbed her clitter us with an ice cube, and shot her up. I don't know how graphic you can be with this thing, he said over the phone, pausing mid story to ask me about the Guardians policy and discussing orgasms. But the next afternoon she came to see me, and her orgasms came more quickly, very strong ejaculatory orgasms. The passion, the thunder, the sound she was making, he sighed at the memory.

That's when I thought I should try this on my patients. And I know the fucking the doctors listening to this have their fucking jaws on the floor right now. Oh my fucking god. Yeah, that is a story, another chapter in this story. I hate him also like if this umh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, I just thought I should, Yeah, I should try this on my patients. It's amazing. So I'm not a doctor. Saw you. I saw you injecting your penis this whole time, and

I was give me some of that good blood. So um, I'm not a doctor, but the American Medical Association is a doctor, and it seems to me and to Dr Jim Gunter, from whom I found This pointed out that this whole story is a very clear violation of the Code of Medical Ethics, which states, quote, romantic or sexual interactions between physicians and patients that occur concurrently with the

patient physician relationship are unethical. Such interactions detract from the goals of the patient physician relationship and may exploit the vulnerability of the patient, compromise the physician's ability to make objective judgments about the patient's healthcare, and ultimately be trimental to the patient's well being, which shouldn't need to be said, but is written up there. Uh and this seems like a clear violation of that to me. Um, I love that.

He added that she was like, grab your head lamb. Like that's just like a clear like the keys making this up. No, girlfriend is like, oh my god, grab your needle and your head lamp Like no, yeah, it's something else. So Dr Rynolds tells the story to reporters as if it is a charming anecdote. Um, And the reason why he thinks this is charming is very much rooted in his idolization of Dr Forceman, the guy you did that hard surgery, and himself. So yeah, enforcement experimenting

on himself. He was exiled from mainstream medicine for his boldness, but he was eventually recognized as a medical pioneer and a genius. Um Reynolds wants so badly to identify himself with Forceman that he includes this line in the who is section of his website quote, I actually pulled up Dr Forceman story on Wikipedia and read it for a few minutes to get psyched out before I injected my own penis with p RP, which I did twice before

I injected any other person's penis or clitterers slash vagina. Now, some people might equipal with the fact that he's equating himself and his orgasm medicine experiments with a doctor struggling to cope with a way to save heart disease patients. But I actually think that sexual health is incredibly important, so I'm not going to like ding him on that.

What I will ding him for is the fact that doctor Reynolds clearly never cared about anything but rushing to patent his treatment so he could ring the most possible money out of it. Dr Forceman, on the other hand, spent decades as either a small town doctor or a frontline military doctor. He turned down impressive jobs and titles when they were offered to him because they he felt they exceeded his depth of confidence. Um, he was a pretty humble guy. Whatever else you want to say about him, Um,

and his innovations contributed to medical science. None of those things can be said about Dr Ronalds, although I am glad he moved from on from experimenting on homeless people to experimenting on his own dick, I guess that's a step forward. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's the step I prefer. I would prefer injecting himself and injecting innocent people,

that is, homeless people. But his his claim that like, first of all, two times, if you're only to like be like I injected myself twice before anyone else, first of all, if you want to be serious, twice is

not enough. And also, like this just brings me back to my point of him being so consumed with the story and versus the medicine, like he wants to be a pioneer so desperately that that's all he that's all it is, And he's clearly the way he describes the story tells you that like he'd made his mind up about what this was because like a real scientist doing if they did this to themselves, might not like, Okay,

well it feels like my orgasms are better. But is it possible that I'm just into medical kink, like like maybe this is just what like and it's not a groundbreaking medical treatment. Perhaps other research should be done. Um. Yeah, but also you should never have That's a really good point. You should never go into anything being like I'm going to be a pioneer because of this, Like that's the whole research and testing Like yeah, but obviously cites he read,

he read his Wikipedia pages, cite himself up, are you shipping? Like, yeah, yours? All of this is horrible. Yeah, Now, Dr Charlie he puts it out himself. Yeah he does because he doesn't. He thinks this is fine and he's never really faced consequences for it. So clearly it is sollusion because he's attracted goddam so. Dr Charles Reynolds names another hero on his website, Barry Marshall. Dr Barry Marshall and Marshall is

another doctor with a very cool story. In the early nineteen eighties, Barry Marshall became convinced that peptic ulcers and gastric cancer were both caused by a specific sort of bacterium. Conventional medical wisdom at the time was that ulcers were caused by stress or certain foods. Marshall was ridiculed ridiculed at first for his hypothesis and has been quoted as saying everyone was against me, but I knew I was right.

And Dr Marshall eventually proved his hypothesis by drinking a culture filled with ulcer causing bacteria and giving himself an ulcer. His work revolution suctionize the treatment of ulcers and the prevention of gastric cancer. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his enormous achievement um and you can see why Dr Reynolds likes this guy. Renald's writes about Dr Marshall quote, he gave up gaining acceptance in Australia and then came to the US, and only after the popular press started

talking about it the physicians start reading his research. He gave himself an ulcer by drinking the bacteria. Dr Marshall and his acceptance of the prize, quoted Daniel Borstein, the greatest obstacle to knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Now, some of what ronalds says here is true. Doctor Marshall did in fact give himself an ulcer, but there's actually a lot of debate about whether or not the medical community was wrong to be as skeptical

about his ideas as they were. Doctor Reynolds claims that the skepticism was only because cutting out ulcers was big business and other doctors had no financial interest in alternative treatments, and this claim is undercut by the fact that Barry Marshall received funding from a major medical institution to spend a whole year conducting his research. He did test it on himself eventually, but he was given funding to do

the studies that he was doing. So the idea that like, he did face resistance people who didn't think that what he was suggesting was reasonable. But also there was an institution willing to let him conduct these studies in a controlled and and scientific way. Um, So it's not like he was completely alone, like an institution was like, yeah, there's enough merit to your case that, like, here's some funding, figure it out. Um. You can argue that doctors were

more skeptical than they should have been. But Dr Marshall didn't just give himself an ulcer and say, see, I've solved the problem. He had a research partner, he had lab assistance, He worked at an institution. When he proved his hypothesis, more test tests were conducted, and more research was done until an effective treatment was devised. This is

how medical science is supposed to work. By contrast, Dr Reynolds did not do go from shooting his own dick or his girlfriend's labia full of blood to conducting double blind clinical trials. Um this would be difficult because he's been banned from doing that sort of work due due to his shame a criminal conduct, borderline criminal conduct. Instead, he left right to not just he left right to selling the O shot. So like the they didn't do, he didn't do what Marshall did. He just starts marketing

this thing. After he decides it's effective. That should be a fucking crime. That should be a fucking crime. Seems like it ought to, but it's not. And he started selling and conducting training sessions so other doctors could could sell the O shot too. As of this moment, he's trained at least five hundred medical practitioners and more than twenty women have had the UH the O shot UH

done on them. Runnalds estimates that it has an eighty five percent success rate, based mainly off of how he feels, because again, no conclusive clinical trials have been done on this treatment. He does have like one or two small batch studies about its efficacy at treating other things that

he cites as evidence that the O shot works. However, as Dr jin Gunter notes about one of the studies, the only study of vaginal injections listed on Dr Reynolds's website is in is the Journal of Women's Health Care and open access journal from o Mix Publishing Group, which has been listed as a potentially predatory journal. Now there's no universally agreed upon definition of a predatory journal, but most of them are basically self publishing platforms for scientists.

They allow you to publish a study for a fee, and they provide no editing or peer review process because a lot of them don't actually care about putting out good information. Some of these just like ship posting yourself yourself. It's like medium for scientists. Yeah, exactly, I was just thinking about uh. Gunter continues quote regardless of the journal. It is a stretch to call this paper a study.

It's a case series of eleven women with a variety of sexual complaints raging from disperunia UH to orgasmic disorder the sexual dysfunction experienced by a woman with disperunia. Never mind that there are a multitude of very different conditions that can cause disperunia, so it really shouldn't be a single diagnosis in the study cannot be compared with the

sexual dysfunction of a woman with an arousal disorder. The results of the eleven women six reported some kind of improvement, but honestly the statistics are of no value given the small samples eyes and the fact that there are four very different diagnoses lumped together. I also can't tell if it was retrospective or perspective. The two women who had minimal procedure pro procedure dysfunction reported extreme arousal for one to two weeks afterwards. This is the only bad effect

noted in the twelve to sixteen week follow up. The paper is a very short follow up, but Dr Reynolds's website claims the oh shot last at least eighteen months, but up to three years for some women. So there's just nothing really to back him up. Um, he has paid to have enough of something that looks enough like a study performed that he can claim that he's gotten medical backing and no more because a real study might reveal But this doesn't work very well, so that's good.

That just makes me so mad. And I'm realizing now, I'm realizing now that I didn't really have to divulge or like or like a broadcast that I'm like struggled with this thing because I don't know why. I just felt the needs just like be so candid. I just

have no absolutely no filter. But I will say, think about this stuff is so important because if someone had talked about it the way I'm talking about it when I was younger, I wouldn't have felt like such a fucking freak and I wouldn't have felt like such a like a just like like I wouldn't have not felt human in my inability to feel this very human thing.

And so I like was thinking that maybe like I shouldn't have said it, but now I'm like doubling down and I'm just the the reality that I'm even having that thought, Like if women are continually afraid to even breach the subject or or or broach the subject, rather encourages people like this fucking just disgusting human being taking advantage of women that are so desperate to feel something

and just like understand what receiving pleasure is like. And like I can do all my homework, I can like like like practice all these things, I can buy toys or whatever, but I am going to be I'm going to know my body better than any fucking hack ever will, And like women should be encouraged to really do that more so than I don't know, I'm just I'm just getting heated. I'm getting this is a frustrating story. Yeah,

it's a very frustrating story. Um because like yeah, like all grifters, he's praying on a real vulnerability, Like this is a thing that like like like like women who you know are are struggling with the thing that you've been very open about struggling with. That's a painful vulnerability. And he knows that it means he can fleece them for a shipload of money. Um yeah, and it's that's obviously has and he's meant He's become a very wealthy

from it. Yeah, Yeah, exactly, like that's that's that's that's just infuriating. Yeah, it gets infuriating her. Dr Gunter has done a lot of like looking into this guy's like like digital presence. She notes that in the paper that he had published that's purporting to be a real study about this stuff, he listed his address as medical school, Comma Birmingham, Comma Alabama, Comma USA. This is not a

medical school. Yeah, he just stuck medical school on his address because he knows that no one looking to get this treatment will check any further. Um, yeah, it's awesome, now do yeah. Yeah. And in Dr Gunter's opinion, the most unsettling thing about kind of the lack of information about the efficacy of the O shot is that there are no animal studies to show how the vaginal epithelium

might respond to p RP. Quote. The bulk of the published studies involved wounds and tendons muscles, not healthy vaginal tissue. This is a very important point because it is possible that PRP could increase the growth of blood vessels into vaginal tissues, and we don't know if that is good or bad. If a woman has human pamplona virus in her vagina and gets a p RP injection that could cause the HPV to spread or make it more likely

to develop into cancer. Could it cause scarring? Could it lead to unregular lated growth of nerve endings and cause pain? Could it trigger trigger autoimmune conditions of the vagina revolva? She's pointing out, we just don't know, and this is why you don't start injecting performing a treatment in tens of thousands of women when we don't know any of this stuff, like you research it for you, Like there's a case you never jump to human trial. You never

do that. There there is a case for hastening human trials in the event of, say a horrific plague spreading over the land, and you really need to get a vaccine out fastest. There's a cost benefit analysis that can be done, and things can be accelerated. But this is not an immediate life or death issue, like orgasms are important, but we can take the time to make sure this isn't going to cause horrible damage to the people getting the shot, Like right, this isn't like a vaccine for

a death plague. You know, we have the time and energy being given to it to make it so we can do it right, Like, this is a serious issue, but it's not. It's just for a for a medical standpoint, you never like it's it's just it's very frustrating. It's very frustrating. So after all this, we've established, you know how reckless this guy is and how unproven his treatment is. And the question that follows, naturally is why do you keep people keep buying it? And the answer for that

is is really fucking sad. And it ties into the stuff we're talking about at the top of this episode. A lot of women are a lot of people with vaginas can't organize or orgasm reliably, and the best treatment for this seems to be a combination of therapy and having a committed partner who cares about your understanding or cares about understanding your body. Um, you can't prescribe that right, like to a certain extent, you can't. You can't like no doctor can like write that on a sheet and

hand it out to you. Um. Falling in love, or at least falling in like enough to have regular sex is not easy. Um. And so Dr Runnelds offers an easy answer, an injectable answer to what is really a very complicated question. And this helps explain the demand for dr orgasms services, but it doesn't explain why so many women do swear by his work. And for that explanation, we're going to have to turn back to that article

in The Guardian by Kathleen Hale. The opening paragraphs of this article about Runnals are filled with more red flags than a Communist Party rally. And I'm gonna quote here Runnalds. His office isn't like anything. Isn't anything like the sterile exam rooms most women associate with gynecological exams. It's intimate, personal and cozy because in addition to treating thousands of patients there over the years, he also lives there. There's a small entry way. The small entry way opens up

to a living room dominated by jim equipment. In the bathroom, I found a functioning shower and shelves filled with employees toiletries. The only examination table was separated from the kitchen by a curtain. Pamela, Julian Vivianne. The three women on Renalds is four person staff greeted me with open arms in order to better understand what they promoted. Pamela and Vivian told me they both had O shots administered by Runnels. Mark, the sole male employee, opted for the male version a

P shot. If you're like me, that stuff gives you some flashbacks to to Dr John Brown, like you know, the guy we talked about who did horrific surgeries from his own home on on trans people. UM. It's generally not considered ideal for a doctor to perform operations in his own home, but it's also not impossible for such a situation to be sterile, and I have not heard any allegations that Dr Reynolds is set up violates any

health codes. UM. The part where all of his employees used the medicine that he makes is real culty in a bit of a flag though UM and the cult vibes don't decline. As the article goes on, quote, as we awaited for the arrival of my first interview subject, Lacy Reynolds suggested that I might want to try the

O shot for myself. You'll love it, Vivian said. She told me that doctors regularly flew in from all over the world to be trained in the procedure, and that initially they reacted to offers of free O shots, just as I had, with a mix of embarrassment and surprise, but by the end she said everyone wanted one. I mean, it's kind of I can kind of understand, like if you go to a dentist or orthodontist, you want everyone there to have straight teeth, right, like you want everyone

there to have had braces or whatever. But this is completely be different, Like it's not the same thing. And I do think I think the fact that it's in a house and not in a more sterile place, I think that lends to getting these women to trust him, like it's more intimate, and it's more it is you're, you're, you're, you're praying on them in very emotional mental ways that they don't even realize it's you're you're making them feel like they're yeah, that that that they're safe, but they're not.

And it feels like the kind of classes he does with the doctors, the in person ones at least, are kind of like that too. Um. There's a line in here where Reynolds laughs quote recalling how the last class had run until three in the morning just to accommodate demand, and he says it's like a Baptist revival. Except you're injecting each other's genitals. I know that's sucking wild Yeah now, hay.

This Guardian All article by Kathleen Hale also notes that the location for Renalds is off this, which is fair Hope. Alabama is in the middle of the Bible Belt, and it's a place where vibrators are illegal due to the state's anti obscenity laws. Um. Where I grew up in Texas was like that too. They had to market them as cake toppers, like as like decorations for like cakes for bachelorette parties and stuff, even though yeah, yeah, because

it's illegal to sell a vibrator because Texas hates hates women. Um, yeah, that's crazy. I had no idea. Yeah. And and the data here is imperfect. Um, but there is a decent amount of data that suggests that highly religious women, and particularly like religiously orthodox type women, are more likely to suffer from orgasmic disorders than secular women. Um. And the women hail in views, I can. I can tell you why.

I can. Obviously, Like you're grown your you grow up with shame around your body, and that shame has this you. You have this inability to really let go and experience pleasure. Like obviously that makes sense, but he's like pretty much taking advantage of that, Like he's capitalizing on this group of women having the issue that he is pretending to know how to solve. Yes, And it makes sense that this guy who otherwise you would expect a doctor like this to be like in Los Angeles. I think he

picked his location. I think he decided to stay in Alabama for a reason, and it's that he's very good at manipulating this particular kind of of person, very like religious conservative ladies who have orgasmic disorders, and he's good at making them trust him. Um. Yeah, yeah Hale's article. Yeah,

so it's um. The women that Hale interviews for that article described themselves overwhelmingly as um very empathetic, Bible believing Christians like the women who have gotten this shot, and an outsized number of them are unfortunately victims of raper sexual assault. UM quote. Lacy and athletic, forty year old businesswoman told no one when she was raped for the first time at age thirteen, but soon her father noticed something different about her and started calling her horror and

a lesbian. Physical abuse followed when Lacey's next rapist. Her husband found himself unable to climax unless Lacey was in excruciating pain. He raped her throughout their tenure relationship. UM. So yeah, and the damage from this left her, at twenty nine years old with um incontinence uh and scarring UM. She went the bed uh and she was just kind of unable to orgasm. UM. Doctors responded to her condition concerns by suggesting she used lube with her partners and

undergo psychotherapy. UM. And by age thirty, Lacey never expected to experience sexual pleasure again. UM. She tried using a back massager to stimulate herself, but it left a callous

on her clitteress. UM. So she just didn't know how to. Yeah, she's just a victim of of of unbelievable abuse, UM who did not know how to like like like like who was maybe getting some psych psychological counseling, but because of where she lived and sort of like the the culture she was in, was not able to really talk about sex with anyone and never had that conversation, never

had a conversation about how to masturbate. And then she meets Dr Reynolds UM and they meet at a bank and she learns what he does, and she confides in him that she can't orgasm, and he tells her that he knows something that might help, and I get the feeling. She says that he gave her the O shot and she immediately felt alive down there. You get the feeling though, that also they're having just conversations about sex and maybe she's never gotten to have that. He's giving her an

intimacy she's never known. And I don't want to I don't want to discredit any of what these women have felt or no, no, no, but there is a level of placebo that goes into this, like you, it's leading up to it, just like the connection with with the with the women, the this promise of of like just like everyone telling them it's going to work, the staff and everything like, there's going to be a certain amount of placebo that just by default is there because it's

so high and and the data we have makes it very clear that having healthy conversations about your your genitalia and about sex with people who care about you, or at least seem to care about you really helps with an orgasmic disorder. That's a super important part of treating it and there's again this is part of why, like why you need an actual study on something like this, because there's no separation for like the conversations they're having in like the intimacy of the encounter and the shot,

Like none of that's being separated. There's no way to know what the shot is doing, if actually anything, because a whole lot is wrapped up in all of these women's stories with Dr Reynolds and that's but that just helps in Yeah, it does help him it, but it does not necessarily help these women. It doesn't help us to know if this thing actually works. Um. Yeah, which is why skeptics like Dr jin Gunter will point out that anecdotal data is not the same as scientific data.

And she points that out, pointed that out to Kathleen Hale and the Guardian article because Hale talked to Dr Gunter um and Hale understood that, but also had a lot of trouble writing off these women's experiences. Um. She was clearly convinced to it a read by their embrace of the O shot. And it's very convincing when you have a lot of people say this thing helped me. Um. She did ask Renalds, though, why he tended to gravitate

towards trauma victims, and his answer was interesting. He responded, quote, I don't really know why I'm surrounded by people who have pain. I do absolutely make a conscious effort to find them. I think my real usefulness evolves out of It's not even compassion, it's more like obsession, which is yeah, more of an honest answer, Yeah, it should be right, what the yeah? And that is that's there is a reason why cult leaders gravitate towards abuse victims, as do grifters.

Um Because in general, our society doesn't a ship job of taking care of these people. Um. And it's a natural human need to respond to people who reach out and show compassion for you in times of lonely darkness. And I think this explains part of Dr Reynolds's success UM.

And another part of it is explained by what's called placebo theater, which is very well documented fact that receiving any kind of treatment in a clinical medical setting, especially if it's expensive, will increase a patient's belief that the treatment will work and actually increase the efficacy of the treatment. This is a placebo effect thing, and it doesn't help a lot when you're treating metastatic cancer. But a lot of orgasm. Orgasm is mental, right, Like, that's where the

block comes up for a lot of people. And it's not unheard of four placebos to be effective enough to sixty percent of cases for these sorts of situations, because again, you don't actually have to physically affect, you just have to make them believe, like, and if they believe it will work. This is primarily a mental block. That's all it is. I mean not all it is. There's more.

That's a lot of it. Yeah, a big part of the research that I've been doing personally, like it's it's a they talk a lot about letting go and ways to make your mind, Yeah, like let go essentially of everything.

That's like, because there's this pressure around even achieving the word achieving an orgasm is like so I think counterintuitive because it makes it seem like you're reaching for something constantly, and if you're having sex with a partner, at least in my experience, I always felt like I'm never going to give them what they want because I can't do this thing that I'm supposed to be doing. And so then I then I get really into like giving rather than receiving. And I get a lot of pleasure out

of that. But then it kind of like when you're really grappling with this idea of um, yeah, the fact that it's all mental. It's all mental, because if you're too consumed with I'm I can't do this thing, or or if you're even thinking like I have to let go,

I have to like go, that's not letting go. And so I can only imagine like all these elements that allow women too for their minds, Like he's making them comfortable enough to believe that this is going to help them and that in and of itself makes them feel better. And and if that's all he was doing, I wouldn't have any problem with this guy. I mean I would because of the homeless people study, but like I would

have a problem with this current business. Like if this guy would just like, hey, I'm a doctor in the Bible Belt and I help women who have problems orgasm, ng um, and a lot of women said he helped them, I'd be like, yeah, fine, great, but he's also injecting them with He's also performing a medical operation that we have no data on what kind of long term harm

it might do. To them like, that's that's where the issue is, right, Um, that's yeah, And it's not just therapy, it's not talking, and you're physically doing something to a body he is not medically sound. And another impact comes from the fact that the O shot costs about hundred dollars, and controlled studies have shown that spending more money on a medical treatment can increase the placebo effect as well, and even Parkinson's patients have shown physical improvement in situations

like this. So again, like a lot of this has nothing to fucking do with whatever he's injecting them with, and everything to do with the psychological atmosphere that this person sets up and his his his his operation. Now, the experts Kathleen Hale talked to mentioned all of this but quote as she but as she writes, quote as a layperson, I couldn't help but respect their authority, but as a human being was hard for me to discredit so many women's stories when they said the O shot worked,

I believe them. So she got the shot herself and it didn't. It didn't do anything. And I think it's just because she didn't. She's never had she didn't have an issue, right, Like she had no problem having orgasms. She had the shot and she didn't notice anything, and that is what you would She didn't go into it with the trauma. She didn't go into it with a like,

uh something to be fixed. Yeah, you know, like she wasn't searching for a like you know, I don't know that makes sense, and it's it's one of those things where like, at the end of the day, I have to admit that compared to our usual bastards, the harm this guy is currently perpetrating is minimal. Like, these women are out money, but there's not well, there's not evidency's

helping them. There isn't evidence he's hurting them. Although it is possible that he's doing a lot of damage to them, we just don't know for a while because again, nobody's fucking looked into this. Um it's uh, I don't know. Like I hate this I because I think he's a

bad person and he's taking advantage of people. Um. But I also I think the thing that I hate more than this guy is the fact that we have such a shitty system set up in our country for any kind of sexual health care, for informing people about their bodies, for giving women who are having this problem a place where they even know they can go to for help. Um, Like that's that system leads him for his success, Like

that system made him successful. And I agree with you that, like in the grand scheme of things, he's not like a murderer, Like he's not like you've talked about shittier people on your show, for sure, But the institution at large, you're right, is what is contributing to his success. And that institution is so flawed and so broken, and it makes women believe that there's they are there, they that that they need to be fixed. And he's capitalizing on

that in a huge way. And he's getting away with it. And he should have been banned from everything medical along as time ago, but he's still operating on a level that should be criminal up yep. And he's he's trying to get into coronavirus grift. It's a pretty minor one. He wants to like create a nationwide UH blood bank basically to take plasma rich blood from people that have had it, that might have antibodies and give it to other people. And like folks who aren't grifters are already

doing basically this. He's just trying to create his own thing, and it doesn't look like it's work. I haven't seen it pick up a lot of steam because he's the blood guy. Yeah, so I I don't know. I like, as far as all of the grifters that I worry about, he's not super high on my list. Keep an eye on him because he might wind up with a grift that actually does harm a whole lot of people, where he might find out that his current grift is more harmful than we know. I just am so frustrated by

the story. At the same time, like as with most of the grifters who are currently eating the decent and often kind of dumb people of this country alive. Um, the reason why they're able to do what they do is because are we don't take care of our people. There's no systems that that provide people with any option that they have a chance that they have that there is actually a reasonable, non exploited of way to deal with a problem like a sexual problem that they have.

And so the first handsome, well spoken person who has what looked like convincing credentials and says he can cure you, you'll you'll just trust him if he has if he has a nice face. And there are so many ways we should have set up our society to to reduce the ability these people would have to um grift the vulnerable, but we have done none of that. And I guess that makes sense because this is America. Yeah, I I agree with all of that, and it's really terrible because

it's so true. And I am I under I realized that most of your listeners Actually, no, I don't realize. I'm assuming that a lot of our listeners are men. But for the women out there that are listening to this, I if you, if you relate to anything I said,

You're not alone. And I know this is like not supposed to be about my own ship, but I just I'm so angry that someone like this is getting away with something that I've struggled with, like my whole life, and like I'm I'm a sexual person like I and the fact that I have this one thing that's like been bugging me my whole life that especially in like today's world where everyone's really empowered and sexually uh just

outspoken and everything. As someone who's also progressive, it makes me feel like I can't keep up, Like it makes me feel like I'm not. I can't really understand where everyone's coming from. And maybe it'll happen one day, maybe it won't. But just accepting that where you are right now is where you are is so much better than being I don't know, berating yourself or something that is not in your control, like you just I don't know.

I just wanted to end this in like a poetic way, and it's not coming out the way I wanted to. There's just people feel I just don't want people to feel like this is a subject that we shouldn't talk about because I had hesitation admitting that I've never like that I have. I don't know this experience and I like I have my my sexual history is like a little bit confusing just because I don't know I am

the way I am. But um but I think the fact that me even coming from someone who just shot all over this guy and would never do this thing, I can't deny that. There was a little, a little voice in my head. I was like, what if it does work? Like what if this is like like when we first started talking about it, and I was like, well, maybe this is the answer to all my problems and this is coming from someone I think I'm not. I

think I'm like reasonably intelligent. So I don't know. I just think the depth of shame and trauma that we hold with ourselves is just not okay, and we just have to come at this whole thing with like love. And I haven't talked to human all day today, so I forget how conversations work. So please come me off at any time. You're great. I'm sweaty. I'm so sweaty talking about so. I don't know. I just thank thank you for having me on to talk about this. I

just thank you for talking. I was supposed to say no, I mean, you're supposed to say, yeah, that's fine, Like it's it's important to talk about this. I guarantee there are people who will listen to this and have a version of the same experience you're having, and it will probably make them feel better to know that they're not alone in that, and that's a good thing. And if we're talking about things that reduce the ability of guys like this to grift people, it is being able to

talk about this ship. So I'm glad that you felt comfortable talking about it to an intimate audience of me and Sophie and several hundred thousand strangers. Cool. Thanks, Robert. I am going to I will say right now, if any of the fucking dudes listening do creepy ship on Twitter? Do you after is, I will fucking tear your as a new one digit. Don't be a fucking gross about this. Okay, don't nobody nobody? Yeah, thank you, Robert. I appreciate that.

I mean, like I just I go back to this idea that if someone was as open, if someone if if if it was the norm to be open about this, I wouldn't feel so weird as a kid or as a as a teen or whatever growing up kind of feeling like there was something wrong with me. And so I think we just have to keep encouraging these conversations. And it's the same institution that put this guy to be successful, that that same institution, the same societal fucking game is the same one that makes women like me

feel like they need to be fixed. So um So yeah, I mean, like I know, like putting myself out there is like just like by default get like weird replies to it or whatever, or just like it going to be an interesting week on Twitter for you. Yeah, also I'm like a little bit low key afrase. I'm like, because I was, like I was raised Muslim, My entire family's Muslim. We don't really talk about like you're not

really raised to like talk about sex or uh. There's just a lot to unpack as far as like me talking about this goes like it's not just me as a woman in the society, it's also me and like my culture and like my family in particular, Like I just there's a lot to unpack for me here, and it's this is not like I'm using this as therapy,

which I shouldn't do. Um, but I think even coming from like as an Arab woman, as a Syrian woman, that's even another group of people that I would like to encourage this conversation with, like with it, you know, because like if your children a child of immigrants, if you're you're not taught about these things is when you're growing up, it's just going to lead to more confusion and to lead to more questions and not that's not like a blanket statement, like there are plenty of people

who are fine and thriving the way they are, but this is just from my own personal experience that um, I think that's why I'm so unfiltered and so candid is because I just needed someone to be this way when I was a kid, and I needed to say everything that was on their mind because that's that would would that would have made me feel less like an alien trying to study humanity watching porn, you know what

I mean? Like, Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think the thing you're landing on is that when you realize you are kind of done dirty by your society and the adults around you when you were a kid because of like a failure that they that they had, you know, regardless of whether or not we consider them good people, like there was a there was a shortcoming in what we had available to us as a kid.

When you realize that the best thing you can do is try to be that adult um maybe to someone else, so that they don't wind up with the same hole in their um, experience, their education, whatever, as as as they grow up. And that starts with like talking about the ship that you realize like, oh, I wish people had talked about this when I was a kid. Yeah, I'm constantly trying to be the person that I needed when I was a child. And when you're growing up,

you don't see it as a societal failure. You see it as your own failure. And I think that's what's dangerous, especially when it comes to like woman's pleasure, is that you don't see it as a system failing you. You see as you failing yourself, and you fail like you're failing your own body, and you start to resent your

body and like, why can't I do this? And then hopefully as we get older and become more aware of the society at large that makes us feel this way, then we can like combat those things and just become the people we were always meant to be, which is just ourselves. And that's my spiel. Thank you for coming to my ted talk. Uh. This is the only podcast on earth. Thank you for thank you for having me on the only podcast to make it in this pandemic. What an honor. I know the white list is so long.

Yeah yeah, Just if you're looking for something to do during this time, I might recommend a book of poetry written by A. Sharne that is on Amazon called dime Piece It. Wow. Thank you so much, Sophie. Thank you. I'm currently working on my next one, so that is nice. Thank you. Also, since we're just another thing to do is just try masturbating. That's you know what. Now is the time. Now is the time to really just like try to figure it out when like you have so

many hours in the day. You actually you have exactly twenty four that's that's that's a fact. But you have time to explore yourself if that's what you want to do. And I'm sure many of you already doing that. But this has been quite the journey for me. And doing your homework is it means a lot of things, you know, So just do your homework on your body, on yourself, on your mind, you know what. That's I've said my piece.

Cool alright, Um well, I don't really know how else to in the episode other than um, think a lot about all this and uh go unfunded the world. Yeah, and masterbait funk yourself to unfunck the world. That's the only message I have. I co host a podcast on the Heart Media network Heart Radio Network. It's ethnically ambiguous. We talk to people that are um uh marginalized about their struggles in the world, and we also just talk

about ourselves being children of immigrants. I am Sharine You can follow me at Shiro Hero s h e E r O h E r O on Instagram and on Twitter. It's Shiro Hero six six six. Thank you Sophie for plugging my book. I'm a filmmaker. I have some short films on my website. You can just my everything is like in my Twitter bio or some ship I don't know whatever, figure it out just google me. Um. But yeah, that's about it. I have another podcast called The Women's War. Yes,

you check it out. It's upbeat. I also have nothing else. That is My whole life is these two podcasts. And I returned to avoid in between space and time when you are not listening to me, So please listen again regularly. And thanks for letting me ramble a little bit on this. Yeah, thanks, thanks for letting me just ramble and go. I know this is like a longer episode that I just I thought I got worked up. I think it's good that you did and that you said the things you said,

So thank you for coming on and speaking candidly. And uh again, don't be weird about this. People, don't be fucking creepy. Okay, well fucking handle find whatever. I'll just meet you that is the episode Hi