Cutler, together with John Friend Mahoney, oversaw the Terre Haute prison experiments in 1943 and 1944, in which inmates at a federal penitentiary agreed to be injected with strains of gonorrhea in return for $100, a certificate of merit, and a letter of commendation to the parole board.

The experiments were discontinued when Cutler's supervisor determined that the method of inducing gonorrhea in humans was unreliable and could not provide meaningful tests of prophylactic agents.

Cutler, supervised by Mahoney, then resumed these experiments, conducted by the United States Public Health Service with funding from the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH), as part of the syphilis experiments in Guatemala beginning in 1946, during which doctors deliberately infected an estimated 1500 to 5000 Guatemalans with syphilis without the informed consent of the subjects.

In one especially "offensive" case from the Guatemala experiments, a mental patient named Bertha was first deliberately infected with syphilis and given penicillin only months later.

Cutler, after observing that she "appeared she was going to die", inserted pus from a male gonorrhea victim into her eyes, urethra and rectum.

[2][8] Cutler, who was acting chief, briefed the program to the Federal Public Health Service during the yearly American Academy of Dermatology and Syphilology.