John Charles Cutler

John Charles Cutler (1915 to 2003) was an American surgeon who served as acting chief of the venereal disease program of the United States Public Health Service. He is remembered chiefly for leading controversial human experiments on syphilis carried out under the Public Health Service. In the Guatemala syphilis experiments he deliberately infected unwitting soldiers, prisoners, adults with leprosy, mental patients and orphan children as young as nine with syphilis and gonorrhea. He also took part in the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which African American men who had not been told the nature of the study were deliberately denied treatment.