1,500 words on ethical dilemma of a reading I provided below.

THE TUSKEGEE STUDY (OR “STUDY”)
Nature and History of Syphilis
Past victims of untreated syphilis included Cleopatra, King Herod of Judea, Charlemagne, Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Christopher Columbus, Paul Gauguin, Franz Schubert, Albrecht Dürer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Keats, and James Joyce.16
Between 1900 and 1948, and especially during the two world wars, American reformers mounted the Syphiloplwbia Campaign. Reformers emphasized that prostitutes spread syphilis and that it rapidly killed. As an alternative for men to visiting prostitutes, they advocated clean, active sports, or “Muscular Christianity.”
Anti-syphilis crusaders split twice over methods to prevent spread of syphilis: once during World War I over giving out condoms and again during World War II over giving out penicillin. In each conflict, reformers who wanted to reduce the harm of syphilis battled those who wanted to reduce illicit behavior. ^
This conflict repeated over the next century in battles about venereal diseases, prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, and sex education. The Harm Reduction Movement (HRM) focuses on reducing the associated harms of these behaviors, not on moral censure or eliminating the behaviors. Moralists who oppose HRM attack the illicit behavior and view HRM as enabling it, for example, by teaching men how to use condoms.
During the world wars, the armed services adopted HRM. Commanders who needed healthy troops ordered the release of condoms in the first war and penicillin in the second. After the wars, returning troops continued to use both, normalizing these practices.
Physicians today treat syphilis with penicillin. Such treatment has been possible only since 1948, when penicillin became available to everyone.
Schaudinn discovered in 1906 the spirochete that causes syphilis. It is a chronic, contagious bacterial disease, often venereal and sometimes congenital. It has three stages. In the first stage, primary syphilis, spirochetes mass and produce a primary lesion, a chancre (pronounced “SHANK-er”). During this stage, syphilis is highly infectious. After the chancre subsides, the disease spreads silently for a time, but then produces an outbreak of secondary symptoms such as fever, rash, and swollen lymph glands.