Porn industry in HIV scare

ADULT movie producers in the US have agreed to shut down film sets for several weeks after two performers tested positive for HIV.

At least 45 men and women were under voluntary quarantine because they had sex with the HIV-positive performers or their sex partners, said Sharon Mitchell of the non-profit Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in California.

The first performer to test positive, whom Ms Mitchell declined to name, was “conscientious” about having HIV tests every three weeks, she said. On April 9 he tested positive for HIV and a follow-up test on Monday confirmed it.

Ms Mitchell confirmed later that one of around a dozen women the performer had sex with in films also tested HIV-positive.

A list of quarantined performers was placed on the website of the foundation, which screens around 1,200 adult movie performers a month for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

As of Thursday, about a dozen adult movie companies had agreed to follow a voluntary moratorium on production until June 8, said Tim Connelly, publisher of the industry news magazine AVN.

Although the quarantine is voluntary, the performers involved would not be working for at least two months, until new tests clear them, Mr Connelly said. It would be “absolutely insane” for companies to hire them earlier, he said.

Dr Jonathan Fielding, director of public health and health officer for Los Angeles County, said the agency did not consider the HIV case a threat to public health “at this point”.

He said: “I think they’ve done an appropriate job in terms of the quarantine measures taken.”

It was unclear how much impact the work stoppage would have on the e10 billion-a-year industry, which is centred in southern California’s San Fernando Valley. Some companies have as much as a year’s worth of movies ready, said Jill Kelly, a former adult performer turned producer.

Some of the largest companies declined to take part in the moratorium, arguing that they already have safety measures in place. Vivid Entertainment Group said it requires condom use and negative HIV tests within 30 days of the start of production.

The last industry HIV scare was in 1999, when a male performer tested positive for the disease. He no longer performs and no other performers were infected. Before that, a male performer infected five women in 1998.