Analyze

The positioning that you have to choose, and that Bono gets to choose, between livable working conditions and wages vs HIV treatment - forecloses possibility of HIV treatment AND acceptable working conditions. 

Forecloses critique of the industries’ unethical work conditions - because they are “proven” by inspectors to have good working conditions, and the bodies of the HIV worker-patients who are treated are proof of the goodness of the corps

Worker resistance is foreclosed because they know they depend on this “ethical” reputation to even have industry in their country, which is needed for survival because of past extractions and present oppressive global trade conditions

Bind that the workers are in - they have to perform the ethicalness and pretend their working conditions are ok when inspected because they know that their job (and the whole country’s export industry) depends on this performance of ethicalness and goodness of the factory

Performed Inspections provide proof, as do their HIV-treated bodies

Bono - celebrities promoting - people and at the stores purchasing/consuming branded RED products - blatantly baking “ethical” into the branding of consumer goods. 

Obscure bad working conditions with success of HIV treatment

ALAFA - while genuinely caring about workers’ health, they have made a decision on their behalf that this HIV treatment is what matters, and their working conditions don’t matter; same for Bono of U2 as an example celebrity here.

Fails on the worker’s understanding of responsibility to care for the sick -  violation of moral order because factory makes you sick 

Rejects and sidesteps responsibility for horrible working conditions (exposure and unlivable wages, no maternity leave, insecure) - focus instead on the HIV, for which they claim they have no responsibility, the HIV was already there, so they are responsible for treating those who are their current factory workers, giving them drugs and treatments that help them to be productive bodies, give them trainings that responsibilize them for getting the disease

The ethical is something you can enforce with these performed audits

The ethical is something consumers buy that’s branded and ethically produced - the ethical production is “no sweat” and also made by people whose suffering the profits can go to help

Celebrities and emotional and political sovereignty: “The vague network of forces for which Bono acts as spokesperson decides that HIV treatment is more important, and by extension, that labor violations, work rights, poverty, occupational health risks are less urgent forms of social suffering” -p474

ALAFA, a PPP organization, also makes this decision for the workers

ILO as well, as the inspectors

CSR through humanitarian fetishism, humanitarian consumption of ethical production, ethical industries or ethical production zones, where up the supply chain the brand buyers demand suppliers down the chain be “ethical” (while still demanding obscenely low prices, so of course it’s not possible). 

Ethical production zone against the race-to-bottom for garment manufacturing - instead of the labor being cheap they are sick in a way that the corporation can treat to its own benefit while gaining moral capital - it is a PPP so there are many “stakeholders” paying for different things

Celebrity involvement - consumers of humanitarian products

The authors are Paul E. Farmer, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. All of the authors are involved with the nonprofit organization Partners in Health in some capacity, with experience working with rural or poverty stricken areas. Paul E Farmer, the primary author of the article is a medical doctor also working for the United Nations who has published many other articles on similar topics.

The main argument is that susceptibility to certain diseases is not only determined by biology but also social conditions, leading to a disproportionate disease rate among the poor, and minority groups without access to medical services. The author shows that addressing these social conditions leads to a decrease in disease when combining treatment and prevention plans.

The argument is supported through a combination of historical information including rates of AIDS in the early 1990’s and a study done in Baltimore in an effort to reduce AIDS rates in African Americans, who were more likely to be in poverty, by addressing monetary barriers to heath care. Two more recent cases are also used to support the main argument, implementing a method created by the Partners in Health to prevent transmission and provide AIDS care in rural Haiti and rural Rwanda. Throughout the article references were made to the current medical professional’s dilemma, where they are in a position to see the social inequalities contributing to disease rates but not trained to report or change common social contributing factors. This makes the article more relatable to the reader that may have experience in the medical field which elps to support the argument.

“Pioneers of modern public health during the nineteenth century, such as Rudolph Virchow, understood that epidemic disease and dismal life expectancies were tightly linked to social conditions [55,56].” (Farmer 5)

“…large­-scale social forces—racism, gender inequality, poverty, political violence and war, and sometimes the very policies that address them—often determine who falls ill and who has access to care.” (Farmer 1)

“In an attempt to address these ethnic disparities in care, researchers and clinicians in Baltimore reported how racism and poverty— forms of structural violence, though they did not use these specific terms—were embodied [33,34] as excess mortality among African Americans without insurance.” (Farmer 2)