Health officials say HIV spreading among porn actors

From The New York Times:

Health officials in Los Angeles said June 12 that 22 actors in adult sex movies had contracted H.I.V. since 2004, when a previous outbreak led to efforts to protect pornography industry employees.

The officials accused an industry-supported health clinic of failing to cooperate with state investigations and of failing to protect not only industry workers but their sexual partners as well.

“We have an industry that is exposing workers to life-threatening diseases as part of their employment,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County. “That is outrageous and anachronistic. These infections are virtually entirely preventable.”

The latest controversy began Thursday, when The Los Angeles Times reported that a pornography actress had tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. The infection was confirmed by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a clinic founded by a former pornography actress that offers health testing to sex-film performers.

A timeline on the foundation’s Web site states that the actress, whose name was not disclosed, tested negative for H.I.V. on April 29, but that a positive test result was confirmed on June 4. The woman performed in a film on June 5 for reasons that the clinic told the newspaper were still under investigation. A second test came back positive on June 6.

The actor who performed with the infected woman on June 5 has so far tested negative for the virus, the foundation’s chronology states, although H.I.V. infections can be undetectable for a week or more. A second male partner also tested negative.

Clinic officials refused to comment June 12.

Dean Fryer, a spokesman for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, said the clinic “is not cooperative with us.”

“We don’t even know who the employer is in the most recent case; we don’t know who the talent is,” Mr. Fryer said. “They don’t provide that to us.”

Occupational health officials have long argued that failing to require that performers wear condoms during intercourse and other acts is a violation of safe-workplace regulations.

But Deborah Gold, a senior safety engineer with the California occupational health department, said violations in the pornography industry were so widespread that the state had a difficult time cracking down.

“Many of these companies have two sound stages where they do two to four scenes a day with actors hired from talent agencies,” Ms. Gold said. “In that case, it’s clearly a violation” to have performers have sexual intercourse without condoms.

“We continue to try to find ways to identify those places where employees are at risk,” she said.

The pornographic film industry is centered in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. An estimated 200 production companies in the region employ as many as 1,500 performers, making up to 11,000 films and earning as much as $13 billion a year.

Some health advocates have pressed for legislation requiring condom use in sex scenes.

“This industry has been putting actors at risk for a very long time,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. “And they’re sending a terrible message to young people that the only kind of sex that’s hot is unsafe sex.”

Steven Hirsch, chief executive of the sex-movie company Vivid Entertainment, said condoms were optional among its actors.

“Performers have the right to choose to use or not use condoms,” Mr. Hirsch said. “They’re adults; they know what industry they’re in.”