Three years after an HIV outbreak rocked the San FernandoValley's adult-entertainment industry, Los Angeles health officialssay production studios have failed to maintain rigorous safetystandards and are imperiling hundreds of performers.
While no cases have been reported since four adult-movieperformers tested positive for HIV in April 2004, health officialssay they are increasingly concerned that nearly all studios havedropped -- or never even adopted -- strict condoms-only policies.
Worried about the potential for another HIV outbreak, a coalitionof public, nonprofit and academic health leaders has been lobbyingstate lawmakers to tighten regulations.
'The reality is, an HIV epidemic could happen tomorrow,' saidPaula Tavrow, adjunct assistant professor in the community healthsciences department at the University of California, Los Angeles.'We have no safeguards in place to prevent that.'
The 2004 outbreak prompted studios to impose a temporarymoratorium on production. Amid calls for government regulation, manyalso required performers to use condoms during filming even thoughstudio executives worried about a potential loss in revenue becauseof the restrictions. Some were concerned that condoms would ruin theon-camera aesthetic of films' sex scenes.
Today, however, industry officials say almost all studios havereverted to condom-optional policies and instead rely on periodichealth screenings -- a practice their lobbyists defend as effectiveand comprehensive.
But Dr. Peter R. Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitteddisease program with the Los Angeles County Department of PublicHealth, says periodic screening is inadequate.
Officials note that the male actor believed to have transmittedHIV to three female performers through unprotected sex in 2004 alsohad been regularly tested.
'They've totally relapsed,' said Kerndt, who has providedtechnical support to the coalition lobbying for tighter legislation.'It's like it never happened. There's little regard and noprotection for the people who work in this industry.'
No legislative help
Kerndt said advocates, including the Los Angeles-based AIDSHealth Care Foundation, have had difficulty finding a lawmaker toauthor tougher legislation.
Foundation President Michael Weinstein said his organization hastalked with many legislators but none has signed on.
'This is a worker health-and-safety issue, a women's issue, ahuman-rights issue,' Kerndt said. 'This is the last at-riskpopulation exposed unnecessarily to the risk of HIV and a host ofother sexually transmitted diseases.'
John Schunhoff, county Department of Public Health chief deputydirector, said the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors andcounty health officials have supported efforts to make the industrysafer, but so far have opted against sponsoring a bill.
'We have to pick our battles,' Schunhoff said, although he notedhealth officials still might weigh in if there is an amended billthis session.
'If there is an opportunity of our becoming more active and toreally make a difference, we'll do so,' he said.
'Not in the real world'
Sharon Mitchell, a founder and executive director of the AdultIndustry Medical Health Care Foundation in Sherman Oaks, saidcondoms should be used, but mandating them could backfire.
Mitchell said 'renegade' performers could just go underground andeven give up the current monthly voluntary testing.
'They'll run for the hills,' Mitchell said. 'This is apopulation, you tell them to do something, and they won't doanything.
'We're not in the real world, we're in the world of porn.'
Mitchell, a former adult-film star who helped launch nationwideregular testing in the porn industry for HIV and other sexuallytransmitted diseases after an HIV outbreak in 1998, also questionedthe political will to enforce tougher regulations.
'People want their potholes filled. Who's going to pay forinspectors to sit around and watch people put on a condom?'
In the past decade, 17 adult-entertainment performers have testedpositive for HIV, including two male performers who infected a totalof nine women. Testing caught six others before the virus could bepassed on, she said.
Tavrow -- who hosted a UCLA round table last fall on the issuewith academics, lawyers, legislators' representatives, and pornproducers and performers -- said a state law is overdue.
'Everyone knows from a health (perspective) this is a slam dunk,but there is just so much sensitivity,' Tavrow said. 'Fewlegislative offices see a large grass-roots constituency for it.Senators and Assembly members say, 'What's in it for me? Will thiswin me votes?' A lot of people are worried to be painted with theporn brush, as it were. They don't want to come out as 'Mr. Porn.''
State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the Senate'sHealth Committee, said the subject is an important workplace issue.
But she said there has been little support for tougherlegislation because health officials have been unwilling or unableto do the work required, HIV activists haven't rallied behind it andhundreds of other measures compete for lawmakers' attention.
Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, whose district office is inone of the largest porn-production clusters in the Valley, declinedto comment on the issue.
Under current state code, employers face civil penalties forfailing to protect employees from possible exposure to blood-bornepathogens.
But Len Welsh, acting chief of the California Occupational Safetyand Health Administration, said his agency has difficulty enforcingthe regulation in the porn industry because most performers are notfull-time studio employees.
'We've had round-table discussions how to get at it and no oneseems to have a good answer,' Welsh said. 'It's one of those thingslike immigration: Everyone agrees it's a problem, but no one has asolution.'
Kerndt said the California Department of Public Health couldtighten enforcement if legislators demand it.
But Matt Gray, a Sacramento lobbyist for the Free SpeechCoalition, an adult-entertainment trade association based in CanogaPark, said the industry already employs reasonable safeguards forperformers and notes that even condoms are not fail-safe.
Lawmakers also have little interest in opening a debate thatwould include First Amendment and censorship issues, Gray said.
'Only places like communist China step in and try to regulate howpeople have sex,' he said.
Condoms-only policy
Wicked Pictures in Canoga Park is one studio that has maintaineda condoms-only policy.
'How do you make that decision and then unmake that decision?'Steve Orenstein, Wicked's president and owner, said of porn studios'2004 announcement of the policy. 'A bunch of companies stood up andsaid, 'Here's what we're going to do,' and today we're the only onesstill doing it.'
Vivid Entertainment, the region's largest adult-entertainmentcompany, uses a condom-optional policy in which female performersdecide whether to use safe-sex practices.
Company officials said they're comfortable with the policybecause performers are regularly screened for HIV and other sexuallytransmitted diseases.
'The reality is that there are not many girls who request condomsand we don't look at girls who do (request them) any differentlythen girls that don't,' said Steven Hirsch, Vivid's co-chairman. 'Weuse the girl who best fits the part.'
But Bob McCulloch, a Woodland Hills attorney who representedactor Darren James in 2004 when he tested positive for HIV, saidcondoms are the only way to make the industry safe.
James tested negative for HIV on Feb. 12, 2004, before performingunprotected sex acts for an adult film in Brazil. He tested negativefor HIV again on March 17, 2004.
Between March 17 and April 9, 2004, he performed unprotected sexacts with 13 female partners who previously had tested negative forHIV, according to a final report published in the January issue ofClinical Infectious Diseases.
On April 9, James tested positive for HIV. Three of the women hehad unprotected sex with also later tested positive.
'This is not a preventative system,' McCulloch said. 'It's a'reduce your damages' system. The system currently is designed tosacrifice a small number of people who, no question about it, aregoing to get it, and then limit the damage.
'It's a system that has damage control, but not prevention.'
beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com
(818) 713-3731
