September 5, 2011
'HIV Positive' Porn Performer Re-tests Negative
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
A porn industry trade group says an adult film performer who tested positive for HIV in Florida has been retested and does not have the virus.
Free Speech Coalition executive director Diane Duke said Saturday that porn productions can now resume.
As a precaution, news of the HIV positive actor shuttered porn shoots last week, halting production in the San Fernando Valley's multi-billion-dollar adult entertainment industry.
Duke says the performer will undergo follow-up testing and performers who worked with him are being tested.
Last week Duke announced that the performer had tested positive. Duke declined to release the performer's name, age or gender, citing the person's federal right to medical privacy. She also declined to say how her group learned of the case.
The case was found in an out-of-state clinic that doesn't report to California health officials, said Duke.
The voluntary industry shutdown affected porn producers in the San Fernando Valley, the heart of the multi-billion dollar American porn industry, and includes Hustler and Evil Angel's productions.
Advertisement
The porn industry was shut down similarly in late 2010, after porn actor Derrick Burts was diagnosed HIV positive.
Burts has since gone on to advocate for the mandatory use of condoms in porn with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
The health advocacy group and state workplace safety officials say state law mandates porn performers to use condoms to protect themselves under the same set of rules that require nurses to wear gloves in hospitals when dealing with bodily fluids.
Cal/OSHA is working to clarify the regulation to make it more specific to porn.
Last month, the health advocacy group announced that it will gather 41,138 petition signatures to get the issue of condoms in porn on the June 2012 ballot.
The ballot measure would ask Los Angeles residents whether porn producers must require performers to use condoms on shoots as a condition of getting a filming permit.
"The question remains how many performers must become infected with HIV and other serious STDs before the industry will clean up its act and government will do the right thing?" said Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
The group has unsuccessfully pushed California and Los Angeles County officials to tighten enforcement of condom use on porn sets through legislative attempts, lawsuits and regulatory complaints.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
