Porn Valley- Nicole London, www.outbackxxx.net is setting up a meeting for porn talent May 18, 8pm at the Straight 8 Studios. London, who has now become a compulsive information gatherer relating to HIV, relayed some interesting things from her chat with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.

“I asked them questions about specific HIV tests,” she tells me. “Namely the PCR’s. And there’s two different forms. Essentially, the PCR-DNA test is not approved. They don’t recommend it and it has not been approved by the CDC. Nor does it have an FDA approval.”

Regardless, London asked what the period is for that test to show a positive result. London said she asked the question because AIM was releasing people off the quarantine list this week and she was concerned about that. “I wanted to know. I need to know this,” she says. “I’m not going to start shooting if we find out in 15 days that one of these people released shows up HIV positive.”

London said she was told that most people taking the PCR-DNA test will show up positive or negative, 8 to 10 days. But and it’s a huge BUT. There are a lot of people who won’t show a positive result on that test for 8 weeks. “I was told, look at it this way,” London states. “Everybody’s body is different. Some people have a stronger immune system. Some people might be at a higher risk because they have an STD at the time. Others might be really, really healthy. It’s just the way their body fights it, the same as a virus. It’s like a flu. It depends on your body.”

London said it blew her mind the fact that some people might not show a positive for as much as 8 weeks [which throws a serious monkey wrench into the testing every two weeks argument]. “If the PCR-DNA test is not approved, so how are we getting away with using it?” London wonders.

In preparation for the Tuesday performers’ meeting, London said she’s received a batch of information from the CDC.

“It talks about every single HIV test,” she says. “It talk about whether they’re approved, not approved. Which ones are confirmatory tests, which should not be used as a regular test because they read the level of the antibodies rather than telling you if you’re positive or negative. It’s really interesting. With so many different tests out there I just don’t understand why we’re set on the PCR-DNA if it’s not even approved.”

London said she’s been seeing just enough contradictory information to give her cause to delay shooting. “I’m not going to schedule shoots,” she says emphatically. “I’m not going to do it.” London concedes that she might be biting off her nose to spite her own face considering that most companies are back doing so and basically screwing up the 60-day moratorium which was needed to get most quarantine performers safely out of the woods. It was suggested that by the time she was ready, London would be handed a massive yeast cake from all the STDs.

“Oh God,” she laughs, “It’s just one of those things where I’m here shaking my head. God forbid I shoot now and the next testing for some of these people comes back positive. And I shot them? I’m going to feel so guilty and so bad that I’m going to want to take care of that person forever. I can’t put myself in that position. I can’t wake up in the morning and think something happened on our set. Hopefully people will use condoms right now.”

London then asked the CDC the inevitable question about viral loads. “I asked, say there are two people have HIV and you don’t know which one gave it to the other. And you do a viral load test. What happens if someone comes up around 60,000 and the other one’s 120,000?”

According to what London was told, it doesn’t make a difference. “You really can’t tell. I said why, and can’t that determine how long somebody’s had it? Can’t that determine if someone’s had it a longer or shorter period of time?”

London was given a train going through a tunnel analogy to explain viral loads. I asked her if this was one of those a train is going to Chicago at 60 mph math puzzles.

London: “She [the woman at CDC] goes imagine if you’re on a train and every time you hit a tunnel- it’s a cold or a medication you’re taking, or you have the latest flu. She goes every time you go through that tunnel, the viral load changes. If you’re on medication that can make your viral load higher. If you have another STD that can make your viral load higher. And a flu can make your viral load lower. If someone is trying to tell you, by viral load, that a specific person got it first, they couldn’t. She said you don’t know if somebody’s on medication. Some people have the flu and they don’t get symptoms of it. I’m going, okay. There goes that theory at the door. There’s no way of saying that somebody is along further than somebody else. This whole thing has me reading too much and my eyes are starting to hurt from my computer.”

“What happens if, in 30 days, one or two people show up positive?” London wants to know. “What do we do then? What argument do we have against them coming in an mandating anything. We have no argument at that point. We have nothing to say. The hearings that are coming up? Forget it.”

For the PCR-DNA purists who want to duke it out with the CDC you can call their 24 hour hotline at 800-311-3435