Caution, You Are Entering a No-Condom Zone

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet. Posted October 25, 2004.

By some accounts, Laura Roxx arrived in L.A. in her late teens and on borrowed money. She wasn't looking for mega fame, just a couple of gigs in adult films and a nest egg to get back home to Canada where she'd been an exotic dancer.

Instead she got HIV.

A casualty of an outbreak that hit the adult film industry in April, Roxx's story and others like it have pushed some California officials to propose putting condoms alongside goggles, gloves and hardhats as mandatory worker protection tools – something the porn industry is likely to fight tooth and nail.

The first regulatory volley came last month when the state of California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined two adult entertainment production companies for failing to report workplace illnesses and for breaching state law that requires employers to protect workers exposed to bodily fluids. Evasive Angles and TTB productions, which are owned by the same individual, TT Boy, face a total $30,560 in fines and have appealed the decision. (TT Boy's attorney did not respond to interview requests.)

The April outbreak is linked to a male actor, Darren James, who contracted the disease while working unprotected in Brazil. He later worked with 13 women in California before being diagnosed as HIV-positive. Three of those women, including Roxx, have tested postive for HIV.

Regulators and lawmakers have recently asked the industry to require that actors in adult films use condoms; something that is currently not mandatory even though employers can face penalties for breaking worker protection standards.

"There is no reason that workers in the porn industry should be exposed to serious and even fatal diseases by virtue of employment," says Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Director of Public Health for Los Angeles County. "We wouldn't ask someone working on a construction site whether he wanted to wear a hard hat. It is a condition of employment. Wearing a condom in performing for porn should be compulsory, 100 percent of the time."

Fielding, whose agency has no regulatory authority to make condom use mandatory, has sent a letter to production companies urging them to use condoms and require hepatitis A and B vaccinations for actors.

Some observers fear not only an outbreak among porn actors but that the industry itself could become an infection point for the public at large. But producers argue that condoms are a fantasy busting prop that kills business. They prefer to rely on voluntary actor quarantines and gentlemen's agreements that say producers will only use actors with HIV tests less than 30 days old.

"Most of the industry is going to resist using condoms with whatever means without sounding like ogres," says Mark Kernes, a senior editor at Adult Video News, an industry publication that profiled Roxx's story.

Kernes and others interviewed say most people in the industry have confidence in the testing procedures, the vast majority of which are conducted through a producer/performer sponsored testing program at the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation (AIM), a non-profit group. They say the system failed because James went out of the country and worked unprotected.

But some groups such as AIDS Health Care Foundation have said the porn industry's testing regimen is insufficient.

Because of the need for rapid testing, AIM uses a test known as PCR (polymearase chain reaction), which is the porn industry standard and detects the presence of HIV after about two weeks. Another test, known as the ELISA test, is commonly administered in doctor's offices and can have a detection window of six months.

Though PCR offers a short window of detection, it was not short enough in James's case.

He reportedly took a PCR test immediately after arriving in the U.S. from his trip to Brazil, one week after being exposed. It was negative and he proceeded to work with 13 women.

How does worker safety balance with business interests?

Kernes says many producers have told him that in Europe, where actors wear condoms, sales lag, a contention often parroted by actors.

Kelly Hearn is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and a former science and technology writer for UPI.

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