Male performer Dan Savage claims that the manager of the Northridge branch of Talent Testing Service told him last week that the facility has identified and reported to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services four new cases of syphilis among adult performers in the Los Angeles area.

Among those names was a major male performer.

www.avn.com reports that TTS owner Sixto Pacheco in a call with AVN declined to confirm or deny the information.

Savage, according to the story, went to TTS August 8th along with his wife, performer Ariella Ferrara to get tested following a two-week vacation. That’s where he learned of the situation. Savage later contacted AVN.

According to Savage, the “main guy” says, “So you know there are four new cases of syphilis in L.A. among performers? Yeah, there are four new cases of syphilis in L.A., and one of them is a major, major male talent.”

As Savage rattled off possibilities, the office manager commented, “Well, I can’t tell you, but I’m just telling you there have been four cases recently of syphilis and one of them is a major male talent.”

“I kind of figured that they had started following up already,” Savage told AVN.

“I thought they were handling themselves just like AIM did, but later on, after my wife and I left the clinic, we were going shopping and stuff and I’m thinking to myself, you know what, I don’t trust anybody these days (or ever), so I’m going to call these people back to see if they are contacting producers and directors and making sure these people are on a ‘no shoot’ list.

Savage called the clinic back. The nurse who answered the phone got nervous when Savage brought up the subject of the Syphilis cases.

“I didn’t tell you that,” she told Savage

“Well, he did,” Savage said, referring to the manager.

“Well, I didn’t tell you that,” she repeated.

Savage asked if producers and directors were alerted.

The nurse replied, “Well, we’re talking with the performers and they’re getting treated as necessary.”

When reminded that because major talent was involved, everyone had to be notified the nurse’s alleged reply was, “Well, we’ve been taking care of it on our end and doing everything professionally…we’re going to take care of it. We’re going to contact people that are necessary.”

Savage immediately called Cutting Edge clinic to let them know. They were unaware of the information. The clinic’s physician, Dr. Miao, called him back. Savage said his conversation with the doctor was very unsatisfying.

Judging by what Savage had to say Dr. Miao’s comments were pretty blasé.

“Well, you know, we don’t test for syphilis because it’s so rare. We don’t test for it but every three to six months,” Dr. Miao allegedly said.

“Well, it’s kind of a waste to do those tests on syphilis because we get a lot of false positives,” he added.

“It’s just kind of a waste, and it’s a lot of effort and money.”

“He just basically disgusted me on the phone,” Savage told AVN.

“And gave me no answers and gave me no sense that he was going to do anything or follow up with anything.”

Savage began texting everyone he knew in the industry.

“I believe I was the first person this meathead [the manager at TTS] opened his mouth to, but nobody has said anything about knowing about this, not one person, so I don’t know if this was extremely recent and he just opened his mouth to the wrong person.”

Hours later Savage received a call from the TTS manager telling him that he didn’t have to “worry about that syphilis thing because we have it under control.”

“The people that got it are being treated and are not working right now, and we have let the County Health Department know.”

Savage also wondered how he could make a guarantee that the performers weren’t working and were taking medication.

“I told him it’s useless to just tell the County Health Department and then presume to think that talent are going to stop performing,” states Savage.

“I said, ‘That’s stupid. They might just take the medication and keep performing because no one is ever going to know they had it.'”

AVN’s Tom Hymes then contacted Sixto Pacheco via email and left a voicemail as well. With no response to either, Hymes finally reached Pacheco at the TTS offices in Miami.

“We have no comment,” Pacheco told him.

“Our branch manager out there has no authority to say things about statistics of our talent population in terms of testing.”

When pressed on the issue, Pacheco further commented, “Whatever cases arise, we do report them as stipulated by law to the County Health Department for follow-up and further testing.”

Pacheco also told Hymes that he, Hymes, didn’t have the authority to demand additional information.

Hymes asked Pacheco if he could just simply confirm what his manager had said.

Pacheco replied, “I don’t even know exactly what he said. You’re getting that from a tertiary party.”

When informed that his office manager called Savage back to relate additional news, Pacheco also commented, “Let’s take a step back here…We started offering the syphilis test here as part of our basic panel, and that started about a month ago.

“If we’ve had cases that came out to be positive, and again I’m saying if we’ve had cases that came up positive, then it could be mainly caused … because we’ve never tested for it before … so if you’re trying to tie what’s happening to what’s happening in Eastern Europe to what’s happening in L.A., I can’t even speculate on that because we don’t have previous information.”

Pacheco in his conversation with Hymes kept referring to a tertiary source.

“That’s your problem right there,” added Pacheco who held to his guns that any information about Syphilis cases was confidential.

“You’re asking me to give you testing results on presumed positive cases, which I cannot confirm.”

Regarding whether these were old or new cases Pacheco told Hymes, “We wouldn’t know if it’s an old case, a new case. What we do know is that we need to report it to the County Department of Health.”

Pacheco wound up telling Hymes that he couldn’t confirm or deny the report.

“If our guy said that, he’s not supposed to be saying that and if you want me to confirm the information…I’m not going to confirm it.”