Records of Dr. John C. Cutler

Abstract

(From National Archives Press Release) From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau collaborated with several government agencies in Guatemala on U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded studies involving deliberate exposure of human subjects with bacteria that cause sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Guatemalan partners included the Guatemalan Ministry of Health, the National Army of the Revolution, the National Mental Health Hospital, and the Ministry of Justice. Studies were conducted under the on-site direction of John C. Cutler, MD in Guatemala City, under the supervision of R.C. Arnold MD and John F. Mahoney, MD of the USPHS VDRL in Staten Island, New York; the primary local collaborator was Dr. Juan Funes, chief of the VD control division of the Guatemalan Sanidad Publica. According to a “Syphilis Summary Report” and experimental logs in the archives, syphilis studies included Commercial Sex Workers, prisoners, and patients in the mental hospital. In the series of syphilis studies, a total of 696 subjects of individual experiments (some representing the same patients involved in several experiments) were exposed to infection (by sexual contact or inoculation).