GUATEMALA EXPERIMENTS 1946-1948 
II 
■ Whether oral penicillin was effective as a prophylaxis; 
• Whether reinfection could take place following treatment and its clinical 
course; and 
• Whether reinfection or superinfection could take place in treated or untreated 
latent or late syphilis. 474 
Psychiatric Hospital staff assisted during the experiments on an “irregular yet 
constant” basis. 475 Dr. Salvado objected to having the researchers make supple- 
mentary payments to compensate Psychiatric Hospital staff, but he permitted 
the researchers to share the occasional pack of American cigarettes or a few 
extra dollars. 476 Workers at the hospital notified the researchers of deaths, helped 
at autopsies, and aided experiments with large groups of subjects. 477 
When the researchers began at the Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Cutler proposed 
to shift the $1,500 originally intended to pay prison volunteers 478 to provide 
“for the benefit of the institution rather than for the individual.” 479 At the 
direction of Dr. Salvado and “the Sister in charge,” a refrigerator in which 
to store drugs, a sound projector, and some metal plates and cups were 
provided. 480 Dr. Cutler confirms in his report that these items were purchased 
for the hospital, but it appears from correspondence that the items were later 
sold to the hospital at cost. 481 As compensation to subjects, the researchers 
provided cigarettes for “patient management.” 482 
The researchers also provided medication for psychiatric patients for the 
specific purpose of aiding their own serological testing needs. In a February 
6, 1948 letter to Dr. Mahoney, Dr. Cutler explained: 
“We are having to order large quantities of [d]ilantin in order to 
protect ourselves. They had started treating the epileptics at the 
asylum with intravenous magnesium sulfate which caused throm- 
bosis of the veins so that we are beginning to be unable to get 
blood samples. Out of self interest we agreed to furnish Dilantin 
to treat all of the patients in whom we are interested.” 483 
Dr. Cutler’s Final Syphilis Report makes no mention of this rationale but 
instead notes “the project provided much-needed anticonvulsant drugs, particu- 
larly Dilantin, for the large part of the patient population which was epileptic 
and for which funds previously had been insufficient to provide drugs.” 484 
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