GUATEMALA EXPERIMENTS 1946-1948 
II 
Syphilis is a contagious disease caused 
by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. 
Although it is mainly transmitted through 
sexual contact, syphilis can also be 
transmitted from mother to fetus during 
pregnancy. The disease is mainly 
characterized by sores, but can also 
cause a wide variety of symptoms that 
vary depending on the state of the disease 
(primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary). 
Syphilis can be diagnosed through a blood 
test or an examination of the bacteria 
found in the infectious sore. If caught 
early, syphilis can easily be treated with 
an antibiotic, such as penicillin. 
To harvest the human passage mate- 
rial, Dr. Cutler used exudate (infectious 
fluid) from selected subjects with previ- 
ously infected penile or skin chancres, 
some of which was obtained from 
patients in the local hospitals, including 
the Military Hospital where Dr. Raul 
Maza worked. Dr. Cutler then excised 
the cutaneous chancres, sometimes by 
full “circumcision,” under local anes- 
thesia. 423 He explained in his Final 
Syphilis Report that treatment for 
the donor’s syphilis was sometimes 
provided immediately after removal 
of the chancre but that at other times 
“treatment was delayed to study the healing of operative wounds in syphilitic 
patients.” 424 The material was then ground up and made into an emulsion. 
The “street strain” inoculum was a mixture of material collected from three 
different soldiers. 425 
The researchers used three types of intramuscular penicillin injections for treat- 
ment: an aqueous solution of the sodium or potassium salt of penicillin G; 
POB; or Duracillin, the procaine salt of penicillin in a peanut oil base. 426 While 
some of the subjects exposed to syphilis were not treated absent clinical evidence 
of disease (e.g., the development of a chancre), 388 out of 688 subjects exposed 
were treated in some fashion. 427 These treatment practices varied, however, and 
the efficacy of the different approaches was not fully known at the time. The 
researchers recorded few adverse events related directly to the penicillin treat- 
ment, but they noted that at least one subject died after receiving penicillin. 428 
Penitentiary 
When the researchers began work in the Penitentiary in early fall 1946, they 
limited their work to “good will” screening and treatment, plus serology and 
placebo prophylaxis, until May 10, 1947, when the group began intentional 
exposure experiments. 429 In total, 219 prisoners were included in these experi- 
ments through exposure to infected commercial sex workers and/or artificial 
53 
