The Blowfish Blog

[The Pro Circuit] Fucking Bullshit Considered High Risk for HIV Transmission

Commercial porn, true to its nature, has become a clusterfuck the last few days. People both inside and outside the industry are scrambling to make their opinions known a reported case of HIV in an adult performer. It seems very important to everyone in the room that they be heard on this issue now.

Meanwhile, there’s been a perfect storm of misinformation, misunderstanding, and defensiveness. Hubris, hysteria and bullshit: All three are certified virulent.

Articles like this one show curious figures at best; independent producer Tony Comstock lays viciously in to the sex-positive community on this issue; mainstream producer Ernest Greene accuses the press of fucking things up royally.

That information is being fucked up royally by someone is a fact which is almost inarguable.

Just today (Tuesday), the LA times has published the thoughts of Darrin James, who was the epicenter of the 2004 outbreak. The Times is also responsible for that often-cited article mentioned above, stating that there were 16 “unpublicized” cases of HIV in the porn industry since the last outbreak — a number they seem to have gotten from LA County officials using some really wonky data.

For those of you who don’t know, producers of commercial straight porn in the U.S. generally require a negative HIV test. Most performers get their tests through the Adult Industry Medical Foundation. The Foundation routinely tests all or most performers in straight, above-board, commercial porn movies. In the straight industry, condoms are rarely used — but we’ll get to that. In the gay industry, HIV tests are not standard, condoms are more common, and “bareback” porn remains a very strong niche.

AIM sees to the straight industry; it does not “authorize” performers to work, but reports the results of their HIV tests to the industry through a database that reputable producers access before hiring someone. The foundation is headed by Dr. Sharon Mitchell, who holds a PhD from The Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality. She is not a physician.

AIM presents itself as an independent medical foundation, but in fact is BFFs with the porn industry and exists almost solely at its suffrage. In industry terms AIM is about as far from independent as a foundation can be; it is an adult industry institution. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to put these things in context.

The performer who tested positive through AIM is not being named, because AIM doesn’t do that. On June 4, the patient was tested at an AIM clinic because her previous test was then 36 days old. Industry producers accept HIV tests that are 10 to 30 days old, but somebody fudged on that. The fact that one producer fudged the dates shouldn’t necessarily tar the whole industry. If we are talking about a system that failed because it is not effective, that’s one thing — but if talking about a system that “failed” because someone didn’t follow the rules, that’s another thing entirely. These are rules that performers trust producers to follow; they should be sacrosanct. But they are not rules that are ever, in any way, “enforced.”

After her June 4 test, this unnamed woman performed in a scene June 5 and found out her test came back positive on June 6.

Some sources, however, reported that AIM received the test results on the 4th, which is impossible, or that AIM “authorized” the performer to work. The general public (and therefore porn performers) frequently misunderstand and/or disregard medical protocols, and here someone appears to have played it fast-and-loose with those protocols. Dr. Sharon Mitchell of AIM said the following in a statement published in AVN:

Since AIM does not authorize performers to work, but merely reports their current status to the industry, there is no way that the actress in question could believe that anyone at AIM told her she was cleared to work unless a negative written report had been received and the industry so notified. No such written report had been received before June 6th.

That seems to indicate that the performer and producers didn’t care about waiting for current HIV results, and probably didn’t take the risk seriously.

Regardless, additional rumors circulated that AIM had failed to “publicize” previous cases of HIV infection in the industry, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what AIM does or should do. Though Mitchell isn’t helping that much with explanations I, for one, don’t find all that clear. I’m not sure, for instance, what Mitchell is claiming she did or didn’t do here:

As to reports of other HIV cases not being disclosed, it is clear that most occurred under prior law which only required that the incident be reported and the postal zone address and a partial social security number of the person testing positively be disclosed. As to their being “unpublicized,” the AIM database, which is used by all production companies, lists actors and their current testing results. When an individual desires to go into the industry, he or she must initially be tested by AIM to go into the database. If they test positively, they do not go into the database and cannot work in the industry.

Mitchell appears to be addressing an issue with their compliance with reporting requirements to the LA County Health Department. But such a statement is guaranteed to get necessarily misconstrued in the press and by the general public — porn fans and performers — who are, no doubt, confused.

The short version: AIM publishes performer HIV test results to a database, accessible by subscribers (porn producers). They notify the performers’ partners within the industry. They also notify the County Health Department. They do not release the performer’s name to the press. They do not “publicize” an outbreak.

However, also to be considered are the comments by Dr. Peter Kerndt, an MD/MPh with the LA County Public Health Department. New HIV infection, as Mitchell implies in the above statement, must be reported to the Public Health Department within 7 days. Kerndt claims AIM didn’t report the case promptly because on the Friday the 12th, six calendar days after the positive result, it still hadn’t been reported.. He was quoted in a Saturday XBiz Article as saying that AIM was using this 7-day requirement as a stalling tactic, presumably to protect the industry. Said Kerndt:

AIM is not providing us with information sufficient to confirm what they are reporting . . . we are extremely concerned with the information that is coming in, but we are not surprised, since this industry has been out of compliance with Cal/OSHA requirements for barrier protection . . . What’s disturbing about this is that they’re using the regulation to withhold the information and delay an investigation of a serious health matter . . . They’re saying that this is not a major event. I think if they were to ask the performer, it’s a devastating, major, life-altering event for that individual. It’s inexcusable that it would occur in the workplace.

There is no indication at press time that the performer was infected on a set. She may have been infected outside of the industry, though she certainly exposed someone on the 5th, which unquestionably makes it an industry matter, and one for Cal/OSHA. AVN doesn’t appear to have reported yet, now well past the 7 day mark, whether LA County received the disclosures he was expecting from AIM.

But then again, in the same article, Kerndt manages to refer to “rectal sex,” which makes him sound like he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. That’s late in the article, though, when Kerndt’s rabid recriminations have already set the tone for his comments.

If you’re expecting sex-positivity from the LA County Public Health Department, of course, you should look elsewhere, since it’s their job to manage contagion, not to pat your head and tell you it’s OK to do dirty things and sex is really all about love, intimacy, expression and sex-positive feminism. But is the LA County Public Health Department next going to tell me to avoid unprotected “rectal sex”? Are they going to continue to refer to the woman who tested HIV positive with the Orwellian and profoundly dehumanizing “Patient Zero?”

XBiz’s article from Friday says in the second paragraph that “Results of the June 4 test were received on June 6, but she performed in a scene on June 5, before the test results were back.” — but then in the second-to-last paragraph, “AIM said that people who tested positive through its facility never performed in the adult industry, which is why their positive tests were not publicized.”

Which is still more confusing. My query to Tod Hunter at XBiz clears this right up — AIM says on its website that people who do not receive a negative test do not work in the industry. But “Patient Zero” did. She broke the rules, and so did the producers — unless “Patient Zero” somehow forged her documents, which I find unlikely.

Again, if the system is broken because people don’t follow the rules, that’s different than the system being broken because its stated procedures are ineffective.

Maybe the system is broken. 100% safe sex 100% of the time was the public health message in the gay community in the early ’90s. 100% safe sex 100% of the time is just about guaranteed to protect you from HIV — but not everyone stuck to it. People slip. But producers who don’t wait for current AIM test results before letting talent work are not the same as guys who get turned on, have unsafe sex and think “Oh, shit.” Producers are professionals, or are supposed to be.

But then, AIM doesn’t make things any better by posting on their site:

There are no positive tests from exposures thus far, and AIM does not expect any.

I have a vague sense of what they mean, but I shouldn’t have to guess — and neither should anyone else. They mean there is a positive test from “exposures,” but no subsequent positive tests from exposures to “Patient Zero” on porn sets. But a statement that “there are no positive tests from exposures” requires an understanding of context that is explosively dangerous.

Similarly, AVN, surely without meaning to, is fueling the hysteria. It does so right alongside some relatively reasonable debunking, which has the self-stated goal of correcting misreported facts and rumors So why then title an article “AIDS Healthcare Foundation Wants Control Of Your Penis,” in a reactionary headline worthy of the “Libertarian” Fox News.

The article refers, of course, to the protest by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation outside Hustler Hollywood this past Monday night, in which the Foundation asked Larry Flynt, as an industry leader, to take a stand and make Hustler’s productions condom-only. In the original article, AVN claimed that the goal of this protest is not to get Hustler, or any other commercial producer, to go condom-only; it’s to get the California Legislature to require condoms in porn. But according to AVN’s article after-the-fact, And according to AVN, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation never showed up. AVN quoted Hustler’s Theresa Flynt as saying that the protesters were recruited by Lifestyles brand condoms, taking revenge on Hustler Hollywood for not stocking their brand.

I haven’t the foggiest fucking idea if she was kidding or not. It sounds like a joke, but then, a lot of things do lately.

Thomas Roche blogs at Thomasroche.com.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.