from www.dailynews.com – An adult film performer has tested positive for HIV, a Sherman Oaks clinic confirmed Tuesday, leading to a quarantine of exposed partners and giving proponents of condom use on film sets renewed ammunition to denounce the industry.
Officials at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM) declined to reveal the performer’s identity or gender, which companies they worked for or how many people were being quarantined, according to local media reports.
The clinic was working to notify individuals who may have been affected, said Jennifer Miller, spokeswoman for AIM.
“This case proves again that testing is not a substitute for condoms, that condoms are much more effective,” said Michael Weinstein [pictured], president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has pushed for mandatory condom use on all adult film sets.
“Trying to use testing as a fig leaf to cover up the fact that the industry is putting performers at risk is not going to fly,” he said during a telephone conference.
On Oct. 25, the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) is expected to examine a proposal to require greater use of condoms in porn production, rather than require testing, Weinstein said.
Weinstein also urged AIM to release the records of those affected, and called on state and county health officials to seize the records if the clinic did not provide them.
“People who perform in this industry do not exist in isolation,” he said. “Beyond this quarantine of people, the public health department should be looking at who the contacts were of the performers outside the industry.”
The last reported case of HIV in the industry was in 2009, after an actress tested positive at AIM after making an adult film. No other performers were infected.
CAL/OSHA subpoenaed AIM for her records and those of other HIV-positive patients, but a Superior Court judge ruled that the clinic did not have to release the documents.
In 2004, an outbreak involving a male porn star and three actresses briefly shut down production for a month at several studios.