Wikipedia Guatemala Syphilis Study Continued: the syphilis study section that approved the Guatemala research Grant. During the Guatemala syphilis study, Mahoney was the primary supervisor of the experiments, receiving Cutler's reports on the experiments. In 1946, while the syphilis study was ongoing, John Mahoney was awarded the Lasker award for discovering penicillin as a cure for syphilis.[9]
After completion of the Guatemala syphilis study, John F. Mahoney became the chairman of the World Health Organization in 1948. In 1950 he became Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health, where he worked until his death in 1957.[9]
John Charles Cutler
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The experiments were led by United States Public Health Service Venereal Diseases Research Laboratory physician John Charles Cutler,[24] who had earlier joined the Public Health Service in 1942 and served as a commissioned officer.[25] Cutler participated in the similar Terre Haute prison experiments, in which volunteer prisoners were infected with gonorrhea spanning from 1943 to 1944.[9] Cutler also later took part in the late stages of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where black Americans were lied to about getting available treatment for syphilis. Over 100 people died due to lack of treatment. In a 1993 documentary about the Tuskegee syphilis study titled "Deadly Deception", Cutler defends his actions saying, "It was important that they were supposedly untreated, and it would be undesirable to go ahead and use large amounts of penicillin to treat the disease, because you'd interfere with the study."[26]
While the Tuskegee experiment followed the natural progression of syphilis in those already infected, in Guatemala doctors deliberately infected healthy people with the diseases, some of which can be fatal if untreated. His team created a laboratory in Guatemala supplied by the United States military to discover if there were different transmission rates when the disease was presented to different infectious sites. Cutler created the protocol for infection site research. Cutler and his team discovered that the disease takes 93%-100% if infected through scarification or intracutaneous injection into the foreskin. After the transmission was studied, Cutler focused on the diseases' treatability. People were then recruited and infected and either put into a treatment group or a control group. The treatment group was given orvus-mapharsen or penicillin to see its effects, and the control group was given nothing to stop the disease.[27] The researchers paid prostitutesinfected with syphilis to have sex with prisoners, while other subjects were infected by directly inoculating them with the bacterium.[6] Through intentional exposure to gonorrhea, syphilis, and chancroid, a total of 1,308 people were involved in the experiments. Of that group, with an age range of 10–72, 678 individuals (52%) can be said to have received a form of treatment.[9] However, Cutler claimed all had been treated. Hidden from the public, Cutler used healthy individuals in order to improve what he called "pure science". Cutler participated in intentional infection experiments in Guatemala until his departure in December 1948.[9]
After the Guatemala syphilis study, Cutler was asked by the World Health Organization to head an India-based program for demonstrating venereal disease for Southeast Asia in 1949.[25]
John Cutler went on to become Assistant Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service in 1958. In 1967, he would end his tenure when he was appointed professor of International Health at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. In 1968, he became acting dean of the school and served until 1969. After his death in 2008, his roles in the Tuskegee experiment were publicized and he was stripped of his legacy.[9]
Genevieve Stout
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Genevieve Stout was a bacteriologist for the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau who promoted and established serological