Will Health and Safety Regulators Ruin the Porn Industry?

Photo Credit: lonecellotheory

On Oct. 23, 2010, 24-year-old Derrick Burts learned that the confirmation HIV test he’d taken at the Adult Industry Medicine (AIM) clinic had come back positive. The clinic promptly alerted Porn Valley studios about the existence of a positive test, referring to Burts as “Patient Zeta” in order to protect his identity. Production stopped while dots were connected, tests run and shooting dates calculated.

Social networking sites, personal Web sites, and the Twitterverse came alive while anxious industry insiders speculated about who Patient Zeta might be. The signal-to-noise ratio became even more intense when it was rumored that the quarantined performer was a man who performed in both gay and straight videos, a still controversial choice.

When the identity of Patient Zeta was revealed shortly afterward, it was Burts himself who made the announcement -- to the mainstream press.

As Burts explained it, AIM hadn’t set up a doctor’s appointment for him by November 24, so he decided to seek assistance from AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), an organization he says he’d been cautioned against contacting. He was so impressed by the care he received from AHF that he contacted its organizers, outed himself as Patient Zeta, and offered to sing its praises, along with endorsing mandatory condom use.

“AIM promised they would help me set up a doctor and get treatment,” Burts told reporters. “They did none of that.”

Given that the AIM staff has historically included people who have worked in front of the camera as talent, most notably 19 years from its executive director Sharon Mitchell, such accusations are especially serious. Although AIM insists it offered counseling, test results, and resource and treatment information, there’s not much that can be said on record in its defense.

“The difficulty in response is that he has a right to medical privacy,” said Jeffrey Douglas, one of the attorneys for the clinic. “Any person who is a patient, no information can be revealed about their treatment or even their identity without a medical waiver of privacy. AIM can not respond to any allegation by anyone concerning what treatment they received, due to medical privacy laws.”

Burts, on the other hand, has had plenty to say, including that he must have contracted the virus on a porn set because his only off-camera sex was with his fellow porn-performer girlfriend, whose negative status he generously volunteered. AHF has also had plenty to say since October, none of it praising the efforts of AIM. Indeed, Brian Chase, assistant general counsel for AHF, insisted that Cal-OSHA tighten its blood-borne pathogen standard. In a petition to the agency, he stated that “The adult film industry has steadfastly refused to take any steps to protect its workers from diseases spread by blood-born pathogens,” and “the adult film industry seems to think it can ignore the law.”

What Burts and AHF haven’t been as enthusiastic about discussing is the performer’s RentBoy.com ad as a male escort – or the fact that the set he insists is responsible for his condition was both gay, and included condoms.

The truth is that the vast majority of male/male videos require condoms during anal penetration as a matter of course, in part because the incidence of HIV is higher among men who have sex with other men. Neither side of the industry tends to use condoms during oral sex, although they do occasionally make an appearance.

Straight porn, on the other hand, has largely relied upon regular STI testing using the PCI-DNA test for HIV, a more expensive but more prompt and precise test than the commonly offered ELIZA or Western Blot.