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Transcript

The Aversion Project

By Mickayla & Levina

Their experiment called the 'Aversion Project' was, by far, their worst.

THE END

Thank you for listening.

:) :)

In South Africa, 1969 until 1987, the South African Defence Force's medical and psychiatric personnel were involved in a wide range of severe abuses, the majority of which stemmed from continual attempts to "cure" homosexuality without the participants' consent.

The only way, in which such experiments could be deemed as remotely ethical by today’s standards, would be if the entire basis of the experiment was changed from an attempt at curing homosexuality to studying how homosexuality is affected by the treatments, practitioners were sufficiently educated on the medical and psychological aspects of gender and sexuality and that the experiments were completely optional and followed proper medical and scientific protocol.

How could this experiment be done in a more ethical way?

What is 'The Aversion Project?'

This is a form of psychological treatment in which various homosexual images and videos are shown to the participants while subjecting them to electric shocks and vomit-inducing injections.

However, when this did not work, homosexual males and females were forced to undergo a sex change operation instead. Upon completion, these individuals were given new identity documents, discharged from the military and told to cut themselves off from all family and friends.

Dr. Aubrey Levin

(the head of the study)

How was it unethical?

Ethical guidelines that were breached during this experiment include voluntary participation, informed consent, debriefing and withdrawal.

Most of the participants only took part in this experiment because they felt forced into having to by their families, the society at that time and the South African Defence Force, which they were a part of.

The participants were aware that aversion therapy was going to be used in this experiment but up until then, there hadn’t been any extremely dangerous cases involving this therapy. So they were not expecting to be electric shocked or to receive vomit-inducing injections.

They were also not given the option to withdraw from these experiments and because of this, many of them died during the gender reassignment surgery. Even if they pulled out of the Project, they’d still be a part of the Defence Force until they were discharged.

A famous example of aversion therapy

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