A Positive HIV Test Staggers The Porn World
A positive HIV test made on a porn actor has led the major American largest adult film companies to stop shooting and perform tests on the performer’s on-screen sex partners.This incident brought again to the attention of the public the lack of the condom use from this industry and high risk for the actors to catch a sexually transmitted disease. Most of the 13 billion dollars porn industry is concentrated into San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles, and they have a monthly scheme of blood testing and monitoring. The actors go by themselves to get tested at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks, which is a private, nonprofit organization that started its activity 15 years ago. Jennifer Miller, an administrator for the foundation’s HIV-STD clinic, says that they can not disclose the gender of the actor whose HIV test was positive or how many of the actor’s sexual contacts were identified and lead to the testing of his partners.
But there are rumors between the performers that the “patient zero” is a male which has acted both on hetero and gay adult videos. Adult Industry Medical Healthcare declared that they will monitor the male and female actors which have filmed with the infected performer and were exposed during shooting sexual acts to the patient or to the patient’s other on-screen sex partners. Michael Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles AIDS Healthcare Foundation, says that this is once again an indication that the adult film industry should not rely only on the once a month blood tests, but they should also require condoms during risky sexual acts. The monthly testing does nothing to prevent the diseases from spreading and viral infections, and the actors are exposed all the time to potentially infectious blood, saliva and semen. Most of the infections are spotted too late, after two or three weeks since they have been transmitted to many other actors, too late for the post-exposure prophylaxis, which has been proved to be effective even in people with exposure to HIV.
Most of the production companies do not have employed actors, they are independent contractors, so that the company can not be held responsible for the actors’ health care and for the use of protective equipment, such as condoms. This falls entirely into the actors’ responsibility. However, the companies say that they have condoms available for the actors if they want to use them, but many of the actors, both male and female gave numerous reasons for which they would rather not use them, like the fact that they develop rash from the latex or that they believe that the audience will not be interested on watching condom protected sexual intercourse. Martin, of the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, says that the companies are breaking the law every time they shoot actors engage in unprotected sex because it has been once and for all established that the workers from the porn industry are employees and they have started citing employers for their actors not using condoms while filming.
Shelley Lubben, a former prostitute and porn actress which has become an anti porn fighter and founded the nonprofit Pink Cross Foundation in Bakersfield says that the women from the porn industry are victims because they are infested with lots of infections which can not be treated afterwards. After years of “working” she contracted herpes and early cervical cancer. She says that it will be only normal that the porn industry would work as any other workplace from California and had to follow the same rules regarding safety and health concerns. Weinstein believes that the only solution is to shut down all productions until the problem is solved. There have been previous cases of HIV spreading inside the porn industry: in 1998 one male performer is believed to have infected six female partners and in 2004 one male performer infected three female performers. Currently, there are about 2,000 adult film performers in the United States, out of which 75 percent are women. Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, chief of the division of communicable disease control for Los Angeles County’s public health department says that actors put themselves at very high risks when engaging into unprotected and prolonged sexual acts with multiple partners and sexually transmitted diseases like Chlamydia and gonorrhea are seven times more common among adult film performers than among regular population.
At least one in four actors are diagnosed with an STD in the course of one year and there have been eight confirmed cases of HIV among adult industry performers since 2004, out of which four of them contracted the disease during production. Adult film companies have announced that they will stop production until the situation is sorted out and the possible infected actors are found. Vivid Entertainment Group, considered the Warner Bros. of the porn video business, and Wicked Pictures were the first companies to shut down production. Wicked Pictures, based in Canoga Park, Calif., has required the use of condoms on set since 1999, and even though they decided to stop production because they do not want to put any actor or actress in the risk of working with someone that may prove to be on the quarantine list. Larry Flynt’s Hustler Video announced that they to will stop production after completing a shoot that has already started Samantha Lewis, CEO of Digital Playground in Van Nuys, gave the order to shut down the instant she was informed on this situation.
The National Coalition of STD Directors, have started a program meant to control and prevent sexually transmitted infections in the adult film industry which includes mandates for condom use and more freedom for health departments on controlling whether the safety measures applied by the adult film companies are enough to prevent the spreading of infectious diseases.11
