John C. Cutler, Tuskegee and Guatemalan syphilis doctor, in his own words

Many media outlets have noted that John C. Cutler, the doctor who led the U.S. Public Health Service syphilis experiment on Guatemalan inmates and later participated in the Tuskegee experiment, defended Tuskegee well into the 1990s, most famously for a 1993 PBS Nova documentary entitled The Deadly Deception. Presented here is an excerpt from that program:

Cutler: The Tuskegee study has been grossly misunderstood and misrepresented this way. And the fact was that it was concern for the black community, trying to set the stage for the best public health approach possible and the best therapy, that led to the study being carried out….

We were dealing with a very important study that was going to have the long-term results of which were actually to improve the quality of care for the black community so that these individuals were actually contributing to the work towards the improvement of the health of the black community rather than simply serving as merely guinea pigs for the study. And of course I was bitterly opposed to killing off the study for obvious reasons.