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4.5 Salipante. The Aversion Project: South Africa’s Attempt to Cure Homosexuality
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magazine / story / 2019 / 09 / 15 / cia - fort detrick- stephen- kinzer- 228109/ (cited on page 45). [5] Project MKULTRA. Project MKULTRA. URL: https : / / www . cs . mcgill . ca / ~rwest / wikispeedia / wpcd / wp / p / Project _ MKULTRA . htm (cited on page 44). Chapter 4. Social Science
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[6] AP NEWS. After Learning of Whitey Bulger LSD Tests, Juror Has Regrets. Feb. 2020. URL: https : / / apnews . com / article / us - news - ap - top - news - whitey bulger - crime - weekend - reads - 8df % 20f185e1324cb7079b8a86c48c2ec56 (cited on page 44).
By Brian Salipante ’22
Apartheid lasted in South Africa from 1948-1994; nestled squarely inside this period was one of the most unethical tests of the nations history. In 1968, a man named Dr. Aubrey Levin claimed that he had a “cure” for homosexuality, and in 1969 he was given a chance to test his theory with immunity. Taking a step back to gain a broader understanding of the world, Dr. Levin conducted experiments in other countries that had already tried to “cure” homosexuality and found that neither the patients nor therapists found it helpful. Homosexuality was even removed as an illness from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973.
Universal forced conscription began in South Africa in 1967. When the soldiers first joined, they were examined by a doctor and chaplain to see if they were gay. The soldiers were threatened with harsh punishments and imprisonment if the government learned that they lied about being heterosexual. Homosexual conscripts were sent to Ward 22 of a secret military hospital which was led by Dr. Aubrey Levin starting in 1969 [2]. When the soldiers arrived, they found themselves grouped in with life long drug addicts and people with severe mental illness. The first test conscripts were forced into was Dr. Levin’s main idea and what became known as the Aversion Project. Subjects would be strapped down into chairs and forced to view gay pornographic material. As the subjects viewed the images, Dr. Levin would electrically shock them over and over. These shocks were so strong it was reported that one subject’s shoes went flying off during one. Dr. Levin’s hypothesis was that the subjects would begin to associate their homosexual thoughts with the pain from the electric shocks. In between these tests, soldiers were also subjected to the horrors of Narco Analysis where they were pumped full of drugs so their brain would be in a malleable state. Almost all of the soldiers were chemically castrated by the time they left Ward 22, this resulted in many of them commiting suicide shortly after. The most horrific “cure” still had not been attempted though, Dr. Levin began to order forced gender reassignment for some of his subjects. He believed that by changing their genders that would turn them straight because they would be a woman attracted to men. After the surgery, the soldiers were issued fake IDs and told that they could not contact anyone from their old lives. During the surgeries, there was a large casualty rate, and the ones who survived often had medical issues afterwards. Even if the subjects survived these tests, the horrors were not over. Dr. Levin created a farm named Greefswald where he sent subjects who he deemed had not been cured. Although Greefswald was called a farm, it was more like a forced labor camp. Soldiers at the camp had to build barracks, march through brush for hours, hunt wildlife, and were deprived of food and sleep. Dr. Levin ended the tests in 1975 when he left the military and went on to become the Director of Mental Health in the Department of Health Services and Welfare in the Eastern Cape.
There are countless ethical issues with the Aversion project, and they all build on the foundation that is the basis of the tests. The Aversion project was billed as trying to cure homosexuality which is the first major issue because being gay is not an illness; therefore it cannot and does not need to be cured. The first ethical issue that arises is that there was no informed consent: the subjects were conscripted gay soldiers who had no choice in whether or not they would participate. These men were forced to endure torture, and they would be sent to an even worse labor camp if they ever fought back. Connected to the lack of consent, there’s also the issue of subjects not being allowed to choose to stop the tests. The largest ethical issue is the fact that the tests were designed to harm the subjects. The subjects were gravely hurt in every test, whether it was from the large electrical shocks they endured or dying from a surgery gone wrong that never should have happened in the first place. There are so many ethical issues in these tests, but one of the more egregious ones is the fact that even if the test had shown the results Dr. Levin was expecting, it wouldn’t have mattered because it would be corrupt data. Sending subjects who were not cured to a labor camp incentivized them to pretend that they had been “cured”. When you incentivize subjects to give you the results you want, none of
4.5 Salipante. The Aversion Project: South Africa’s Attempt to Cure Homosexuality 47
your results matter. The Aversion Project was a heinous set of experiments that lacked ethics in any manner after being built on a corrupt foundation of fundamental misunderstanding of homosexuality and transgenderism [1].
The aftermath of the Aversion Project is rather depressing. In 1994, Apartheid was ended in South Africa and a commitee to try crimes against humanities was formed. Following the creation of this committee, Dr. Levin and his family fled to Canada. Dr. Levin ingrained himself comfortably in Canadian culture as a professor of Psychology. He was never tried for his crimes against humanity, but in 2010 he was accused of sexual assault by one of his victims who had video evidence. In 2015, Dr. Levin was charged with three counts of sexual assault and sentenced to 5 years of jail time. However, he was let out on parole after only eighteen months and now lives as a free man.
References [1] Robert M Kaplan. Treatment of Homosexuality during Apartheid. Dec. 2004. URL: https : / / www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pmc / articles / PMC535952/ (cited on page 47). [2] Aubrey Levin | South African History Online. Aubrey Levin. URL: https : / / www . sahistory . org . za / people / aubrey - levin (cited on page 46).
