John Charles Cutler
American surgeon (1915-2003)
John Charles Cutler (June 29, 1915 – February 8, 2003) was an American surgeon. He was the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service. He is known for leading several controversial human experiments of syphilis, done under the auspices of the Public Health Service. He willfully spread syphilis and gonorrhea to unwitting patients, including (but not limited to) soldiers, prisoners, adults with leprosy, mental patients, and orphan children as young as nine in the Guatemala syphilis experiments. He also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, in which African American men, not informed of the nature of the experiment, were deliberately denied treatment for syphilis.
Early life and education
Cutler was born on June 29, 1915, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Grace Amanda Allen and Glenn Allen Cutler.
He graduated from Western Reserve University Medical School in 1941, and joined the Public Health Service in 1942. In 1943, he worked as a medical officer in the U.S. Public Health Venereal Disease Research Laboratory on Staten Island.
Syphilis experiments
Cutler, together with John Friend Mahoney, oversaw the Terre Haute prison experiments in 1943 and 1944, in which inmates at a federal penitentiary agreed to be injected with strains of gonorrhea in return for $100, a certificate of merit, and a letter of commendation to the parole board. The experiments were discontinued when Cutler's supervisor determined that the method of inducing gonorrhea in humans was unreliable and could not provide meaningful tests of prophylactic agents.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Charles Cutler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.