The 2004 outbreak prompted studios to impose a temporary moratorium on
production. Amid calls for government regulation, many also required performers
to use condoms during filming even though studio executives worried about a
potential loss in revenue because of the restrictions. Some were concerned that
condoms would ruin the on-camera aesthetic of films' sex scenes.
Today, however, industry officials say almost all studios have reverted to
condom-optional policies and instead rely on periodic health screenings - a
practice their lobbyists defend as effective and comprehensive.
But Dr. Peter R. Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitted disease program
with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, says periodic
screening is inadequate.
Officials note that the male actor believed to have transmitted HIV to three
female performers through unprotected sex in 2004 also had been regularly
tested.
"They've totally relapsed," said Kerndt, who has provided technical support to
the coalition lobbying for tighter legislation. "It's like it never happened.
There's little regard and no protection for the people who work in this
industry."
No legislative help
Kerndt said advocates, including the Los Angeles-based AIDS Health Care
Foundation, have had difficulty finding a lawmaker to author tougher
legislation.
Foundation President Michael Weinstein said his organization has talked with
many legislators but none has signed on.
"This is a worker health-and-safety issue, a women's issue, a human-rights
issue," Kerndt said. "This is the last at-risk population exposed unnecessarily
to the risk of HIV and a host of other sexually transmitted diseases."
John Schunhoff, county Department of Public Health chief deputy director, said
the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and county health officials have
supported efforts to make the industry safer, but so far have opted against
sponsoring a bill.
"We have to pick our battles," Schunhoff said, although he noted health
officials still might weigh in if there is an amended bill this session.
"If there is an opportunity of our becoming more active and to really make a
difference, we'll do so," he said.
`Not in the real world'
Sharon Mitchell, a founder and executive director of the Adult Industry Medical
Health Care Foundation in Sherman Oaks, said condoms should be used, but
mandating them could backfire.
Mitchell said "renegade" performers could just go underground and even give up
the current monthly voluntary testing.
"They'll run for the hills," Mitchell said. "This is a population, you tell
them to do something, and they won't do anything.
"We're not in the real world, we're in the world of porn."
Mitchell, a former adult-film star who helped launch nationwide regular testing
in the porn industry for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases after an
HIV outbreak in 1998, also questioned the political will to enforce tougher
regulations.
"People want their potholes filled. Who's going to pay for inspectors to sit
around and watch people put on a condom?"
In the past decade, 17 adult-entertainment performers have tested positive for
HIV, including two male performers who infected a total of nine women. Testing
caught six others before the virus could be passed on, she said.
Tavrow - who hosted a UCLA round table last fall on the issue with academics,
lawyers, legislators' representatives, and porn producers and performers - said
a state law is overdue.
"Everyone knows from a health (perspective) this is a slam dunk, but there is
just so much sensitivity," Tavrow said. "Few legislative offices see a large
grass-roots constituency for it. Senators and Assembly members say, `What's in
it for me? Will this win me votes?' A lot of people are worried to be painted
with the porn brush, as it were. They don't want to come out as `Mr. Porn."'
State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the Senate's Health
Committee, said the subject is an important workplace issue.
But she said there has been little support for tougher legislation because
health officials have been unwilling or unable to do the work required, HIV
activists haven't rallied behind it and hundreds of other measures compete for
lawmakers' attention.
Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, whose district office is in one of the
largest porn-production clusters in the Valley, declined to comment on the
issue.
Under current state code, employers face civil penalties for failing to protect
employees from possible exposure to blood-borne pathogens.
But Len Welsh, acting chief of the California Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, said his agency has difficulty enforcing the regulation in the
porn industry because most performers are not full-time studio employees.
"We've had round-table discussions how to get at it and no one seems to have a
good answer," Welsh said. "It's one of those things like immigration: Everyone
agrees it's a problem, but no one has a solution."
Kerndt said the California Department of Public Health could tighten
enforcement if legislators demand it.
But Matt Gray, a Sacramento lobbyist for the Free Speech Coalition, an
adult-entertainment trade association based in Canoga Park, said the industry
already employs reasonable safeguards for performers and notes that even
condoms are not fail-safe.
Lawmakers also have little interest in opening a debate that would include
First Amendment and censorship issues, Gray said.
"Only places like communist China step in and try to regulate how people have
sex," he said.
Condoms-only policy
Wicked Pictures in Canoga Park is one studio that has maintained a condoms-only
policy.
"How do you make that decision and then unmake that decision?" Steve Orenstein,
Wicked's president and owner, said of porn studios' 2004 announcement of the
policy. "A bunch of companies stood up and said, `Here's what we're going to
do,' and today we're the only ones still doing it."
Vivid Entertainment, the region's largest adult-entertainment company, uses a
condom-optional policy in which female performers decide whether to use
safe-sex practices.
Company officials said they're comfortable with the policy because performers
are regularly screened for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
"The reality is that there are not many girls who request condoms and we don't
look at girls who do (request them) any differently then girls that don't,"
said Steven Hirsch, Vivid's co-chairman. "We use the girl who best fits the
part."
But Bob McCulloch, a Woodland Hills attorney who represented actor Darren James
in 2004 when he tested positive for HIV, said condoms are the only way to make
the industry safe.
James tested negative for HIV on Feb. 12, 2004, before performing unprotected
sex acts for an adult film in Brazil. He tested negative for HIV again on March
17, 2004.
Between March 17 and April 9, 2004, he performed unprotected sex acts with 13
female partners who previously had tested negative for HIV, according to a
final report published in the January issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
On April 9, James tested positive for HIV. Three of the women he had
unprotected sex with also later tested positive.
"This is not a preventative system," McCulloch said. "It's a `reduce your
damages' system. The system currently is designed to sacrifice a small number
of people who, no question about it, are going to get it, and then limit the
damage.
"It's a system that has damage control, but not prevention."
Part
III: Porn: Billions, but profits leave The Valley |
Part V: Porn 'forces you to grow up '
DailyNews.com
