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December 30, 2014

Possible HIV Transmission On Gay Porn Set in Sept. in Nevada

LAS VEGAS—According to the Associated Press, the Las Vegas Sun and the L.A. Weekly, California, health officials have announced that there is "very strong evidence" that there was an on-set HIV transmission on a gay movie set in Nevada in September of this year. "A male adult entertainment actor obtained a test for HIV that was negative," wrote Dennis Romero for L.A. Weekly, quoting a CalOSHA press release. "Over the following two-week period, the actor had unprotected sex with several other male actors during two separate film shoots. During the second film shoot, he had symptoms of a viral infection. The actor went to a clinic and had another blood test that showed he had recently become infected with HIV. The local public health department initiated follow-up with the sexual contacts of this actor. Thus far, one of the male actors from the second film shoot has tested newly positive for HIV. Public health investigation and laboratory results provide very strong evidence that the actor transmitted HIV to the other actor as a result of unprotected sex during the film shoot." It should be stressed that there is currently no reliable information regarding which company's set this alleged transmission is supposed to have occurred on, nor has any adult industry testing facility reported having tested either of the two performers who allegedly became HIV-positive. As is commonly known, many producers of gay material do not require that performers be HIV-tested before engaging in on-camera sex, because most gay producers require that condoms be used during intercourse. However, there are some companies which produce "bareback" videos, and it was apparently on the set of one such company that the alleged transmission took place. Needless to say, AIDS Healthcare Foundation was quick to blame a failure of adult industry testing procedures for the alleged transmission, but since this supposedly occurred on a gay set, such procedures may or may not have been followed, and if, as the Sun reported, "Patient Zero" for the alleged event had indeed been tested before performing, there is no information available as to what type of test was used. The hetero adult industry requires a PCR-RNA test every two weeks, but other tests, such as the ELISA test, are used to detect HIV antibodies, but the industry found ELISA tests to be far too unreliable for the industry. That fact did not prevent AHF from blaming industry testing procedures for the alleged transmission. "This is not AHF or supporters of condoms claiming that an HIV transmission occurred on the set of an adult film. This is California’s Department of Public Health and OSHA Occupational Health officials who vetted the performers' blood samples with the CDC and concluded after genetic sequencing that this HIV infection occurred on set," said AHF president Michael Weinstein in a press release. "For years adult film producers have claimed that performers who have tested HIV-positive while working in the industry did not contract HIV in the industry, but became infected through exposure in their personal lives outside and away from adult film sets. This new case puts truth to the lie that the industry has promoted year-after-year, years that sadly saw several additional performers infected while working in the porn industry." Weinstein went on to imply that because the current "Patient Zero" was allegedly tested in California and found not to be infected before performing in the videos in question, the HIV adult performers currently allied with AHF—Cameron Bay, Rod Daily and Derrick Burts—may have been infected on adult movie sets as well, even though subsequent testing has shown that no one who worked with Bay and Daily had HIV, and that on the Burts shoot, his partner used a condom. That wasn't good enough for Weinstein. "There is no proof that any of these HIV infections over the past decade have not occurred on set other that the porn industry’s word, with the general public and health officials relying on the industry’s own self-reporting," Weinstein stated, perhaps being unaware that "proving a negative" is nearly impossible. "This is a tragic repeat of last year, and of 2010 as well as previous years. Won't we ever learn?" Romero, who has written extensively and negatively about the adult industry's testing regimen, also took the industry to task for alleged failures. "The adult biz has argued that its voluntary, twice-a-month testing protocol for performers works and that consumers don't want to see condom porn," Romero wrote. "Requiring prophylactics would push production underground and out-of-state, where performers would be even less safe, the industry's boosters have said. Cal/OSHA appears to have refuted the idea that testing works, however ..." It is this case that may have sparked the brief "production hold" issued by Free Speech Coalition in mid-October, and FSC officials have told AVN that the organization will be issuing a statement on this situation shortly.

 
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