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ernestgreene wrote:

Hope this answers your questions.

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It does. If you don't mind, I have a couple more.

Of the seven cases, it's common knowledge that one of them is male and three are female. Can you tell me the genders of the remaining three?

Also, do you know what approx. proportion of men to women in the AIM-tested talent pool?

Happy to oblige, TonyC:

The other three positives we've detected were two men and one transsexual. All three had been absent from the active talent pool for a few months and were attempting to get back in. We caught them coming through the door and none had contacts or transmitted infections within the performer community. These detections were spaced roughly a year apart.

AIM's testing client base is approximately 75% female.

Curious to know where these questions are leading.

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you wrote: "Those who lack the self-confidence to set their own boundaries are unsuited to this gig and should get out, period."

True, however speaking gonzo we both know those male performers trying to push boundaries which were agreed upon before the shoot in one way or another are the most cheered for. Word of mouth is all performers have.

"So if the cost of mandatory condoms is the loss of mandatory testing, do you think it would be worth it?"

No it would not.

"While it would still be possible under such a scheme for partners to test voluntarily and show their tests to each other voluntarily, any producer who required them to do so would be subject to severe legal consequences, leaving performers once again completely on their own to decide when, where, how frequently to test and under what circumstances to reveal the results. This was essentially the situation prior to 1997 that led to the first HIV outbreak in the industry."

Well, let's put ALCU and mandatory testing aside for a moment.
I admit I see a certain danger arising with a mandatory condom & voluntary testing approach.
A false feeling of security that might lead to talent just skipping the regular testing intervals and other health services offered by AIM. Basically the heck we use condoms we are safe attitude.
On the other hand the AIM proceedings are already established, why should mandatory condoms go hand in hand with the shutdown of AIM?
I know you fear, and are probably right about, the danger that once the gov starts to regulate "something" it is likely to lead to a situation which might drive the porn industry out of California due to crazy follow up restrictions.
So assumed they wouldn't change anything other than demanding mandatory condoms (please forget about "underground" for a moment) wouldn't that be a much better scenario than what we have now? AIM would still function as a voluntary independent institution which knows best how to deal with porn performers and all talent would enjoy the safer-sex working conditions the feature and contract girls already have.

If I got it right your biggest concern is an overegulation with absurd requirements rather than a huge "underground market" on cost of the weakest players. Of course you can base these concerns on your bad experiences with officals to date.

Now, as to your suggestion that AIM offer a seal of approval to safer sex products, I think it's a good one and we have discussed it among ourselves and with industry representatives. I still have some hopes for this coming about, so that consumers who feel as you do could vote with their money, which is the only vote that really counts here. So far, and I think this is very telling, even companies that do have all-condom policies have shown no enthusiasm for such labeling, fearing that more consumers would vote the other way as a result. But we are working on that one and may eventually get something similar to what you suggest.

Wow that's great news. I really hope you get the ball rolling on that one. As far as companies with all-condom policies fearing such a label, I think it is an image thing. It might not be the best idea to use a smirking condom as logo, should rather be something that makes the product appear "awarded". I think many consumers have basically not the slightest clue what AIM stands for and those "anti rubber porn" dudes who know wouldn't buy condom porn anyway, with or without a seal of approval. That we indeed have some porn fans who do care you can see on this board. Also such a seal would not mean there can't be condom free scenes it just means every performer had a real choice to request them.

"I am, as I've said before, entirely in favor of voluntary measures help make porn work safer, and if the consumer can be enlisted for this purpose, I think nothing would be more effective. For what it's worth, that approach worked well in gay porn, where condoms have been the rule for years. While some customers seek out bareback products, most choose to buy from major companies that are condom-only in that market. This is the eventual transformation I hope to see in porn overall."

As I recall sometime ago the gay community had a real safer-sex information war going on,
a form of self-protection yes, but I think it wouldn't have had such an impact without some very active advocates. People who lost friends, people who wanted to change something.
These advocates are missing in the "straight-industry". Many "straight" (forgive my clumsy use of words) talent work with a very different mindset, basically quite the opposite like in "We are not a high risk group, being a porn actor is safer than going out fucking strangers and as we are all tested we can just as well shoot a creampie gangbang".
The reality looks quite different though . Porn talent are an ultra high risk group for STDs (not only HIV). Many male actors are sex crazed and fuck all and everyone (from the make up artist to the strip girl after work to some foreign girl in some disco they go after their regular sets are shoot, there are even guys that don't make it from the railway station to their flat without being sniped away by the first hooker they pass and yes I did not make this up but know first hand).
Also drugs/needles are a big problem as well as talent doing both strip/prostitute and regular work at a set. I know it hurts to be pelted with reality sometimes. As far as I see it talent should become much more active and claim for changes towards safer-sex working conditions.

I hope you Ernest soon get the support you need to push things forward to something that benefits all performers. However I realize AIM can not do this all alone, you need comrade-in-arms, other convinced safer-sex campaigners. The advantage you have is they are among your customers. So instead of just amplifying personal responsibility one might also need to give people an outlook on what could be done in the future and how it could positively affect the safety of the performer pool. Actor unions come to mind. Like when people enter an AIM building for the first time and your personal data gets documented, you hand out one little info paper about some yet to be founded performer union. With their own message board and such not run by a private person with commercial interests. You could couple login on such a board with the personal ID of each performer to prevent fraud accounts of industry insiders. Of course to get such things going performers must become active themselves you can only provide part of the infrastructure. And in order to get them to that point you must confront them with the realities in the biz, not some fairy tales of agents and producers. Statistics to qualify HIV risks won't help, besides there is much more than just HIV condoms protect against. It baffles me to no end some talent still get part of their information from gossip websites and industry controlled ones like AVN.
One advantage of a union is that once a big part of actors is organized you can apply pressure to producers, you can not only inform others about bullies but also provide help with legal measures. While the huge fluctuation in the talent pool is counterproductive on any kind of union, AIM is still the best starting point to inform other actors if there was such a union, even when for the first steps it is just a message board free of retailers, agents, porn fans and producer propaganda.

I hope this discussion does not stop here or gets derailed by trolls, I won't have much time the next days, but I try to check back soon enough.

X-Ray

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Glad we got our misunderstanding cleared up. I really do enjoy our conversations and feel that many of your ideas have great merit. In the heat of debate around here, it's easy to get confused concerning who said what to whom.

I'd like to address a couple of interesting points you raise.

"Well, let's put ALCU and mandatory testing aside for a moment.
I admit I see a certain danger arising with a mandatory condom & voluntary testing approach.
A false feeling of security that might lead to talent just skipping the regular testing intervals and other health services offered by AIM. Basically the heck we use condoms we are safe attitude.
On the other hand the AIM proceedings are already established, why should mandatory condoms go hand in hand with the shutdown of AIM?
I know you fear, and are probably right about, the danger that once the gov starts to regulate "something" it is likely to lead to a situation which might drive the porn industry out of California due to crazy follow up restrictions.
So assumed they wouldn't change anything other than demanding mandatory condoms (please forget about "underground" for a moment) wouldn't that be a much better scenario than what we have now? AIM would still function as a voluntary independent institution which knows best how to deal with porn performers and all talent would enjoy the safer-sex working conditions the feature and contract girls already have."

If I thought it would work this way, I would be much more confident of good results from some hybrid approach involving industry-wide regulations made in cooperation with AIM and representatives of both performers and producers. I only wish things operated that way over here. People who favor government regulation of porn production, citing other industries as models, don't seem to realize that worker safety rules in other industries are written in consultation with representatives of those industries (sometimes to the detriment of workers, as big corporate interests have greater pollitical influence). However, the level of hostility between porn and government here makes such an entente most unlikely.

Our contacts with government officials have made it very clear to us that they wish to replace AIM with a government bureaucracy including no active members of the porn community and that they intend, if allowed, to substitute condoms for testing which, as we've already discussed, can't be legally required by any government agency. We would meet these guys somewhere in the middle, but they won't come an inch in our direction. Like some posters here, I think these wannabe regulators view AIM as a front for the interests of producers and mistrust our motives as much as we mistrust theirs.

This all comes back to a more basic matter of common law. It's a fundamental legal principle that you can't simultaneously regulate and prohibit an activity, which is what led to he striking down of the Marijuana Tax Act. The Supreme Court ruled that since you can't pay the tax without incriminating yourself under laws prohibiting Marijuana possession and/or sale, there was no way to comply with both sets of laws.

If, as I know to be true, the real agenda of the agencies seeking to regulate porn in California is to drive it out of the state, those agencies could not and would not agree to any set of regulations that would allow porn production to operate with any degree of effectiveness, thereby creating the legal paradox that would result in the new regulations being struck down after the existing system had already been abolished. Imagine the chaos that would follow that!

"Wow that's great news. I really hope you get the ball rolling on that one. As far as companies with all-condom policies fearing such a label, I think it is an image thing. It might not be the best idea to use a smirking condom as logo, should rather be something that makes the product appear "awarded". I think many consumers have basically not the slightest clue what AIM stands for and those "anti rubber porn" dudes who know wouldn't buy condom porn anyway, with or without a seal of approval. That we indeed have some porn fans who do care you can see on this board. Also such a seal would not mean there can't be condom free scenes it just means every performer had a real choice to request them. "

We're in complete agreement here. For what it's worth, the labeling we proposed, both for packaging and as a screen card for the actual video, was intended to be a very discrete seal of approval modeled on what the MPAA assigns to mainstream movies. It wasn't the design or content of the label that met with company resistance, alas, but the whole idea.

Only one company indicated a willingness to even consider labeling their products in this way, and that was an all-condom company. I find this infuriating and nonsensical, as companies that are already using condoms know their customers are aware of their policies and clearly don't object to them. I think the concern was that wholesale buyers would regard the seal as a disincentive to stock the products, but I don't buy that. We're going to keep working on this one.

"Porn talent are an ultra high risk group for STDs (not only HIV). Many male actors are sex crazed and fuck all and everyone (from the make up artist to the strip girl after work to some foreign girl in some disco they go after their regular sets are shoot, there are even guys that don't make it from the railway station to their flat without being sniped away by the first hooker they pass and yes I did not make this up but know first hand).
Also drugs/needles are a big problem as well as talent doing both strip/prostitute and regular work at a set. I know it hurts to be pelted with reality sometimes. As far as I see it talent should become much more active and claim for changes towards safer-sex working conditions."

Now here we part ways a bit. I'm not so sure these generalizations stand up on closer examination, starting with the assumption that performers are an ultra-high risk group. Statistically, due to regular testing and the ominipresent external pop-shot, porn performers actually have a lower incidence of STDs than other sexually active young people with similar demographic profiles. While I don't agree with those who contend that having unprotected sex with a porn performer is risk-free by any means, I don't think it serves any good cause to exaggerate the risks either.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Depending on who they are and what they do in their private lives, I would generally rate porn performers as a medium-risk group, comparable to other single young adults in the community. BTW, "civilians" also come into AIM, and we find more positive tests for all kinds of STDs among them than among our regular clients.

"Actor unions come to mind. Like when people enter an AIM building for the first time and your personal data gets documented, you hand out one little info paper about some yet to be founded performer union. With their own message board and such not run by a private person with commercial interests. You could couple login on such a board with the personal ID of each performer to prevent fraud accounts of industry insiders. "

Here we run into yet another legal problem. AIM is a non-profit organization that, under the charter that enables it to operate as a tax-free foundation, cannot affiliate itself with any trade union, lobbying organization or political party. If we did so, we would lose our tax-free status and be unable to offer the services we do at anywhere near the easily affordable prices we charge now. We would also quickly find outselves in the middle of whatever conflicts would inevitably arise between such a union and the producers, possibly leading to the destruction of our credibility with both. Our neutrality in matters of this kind is our best protection from charges of bias, of which we're subjected to plenty as it is.

We have a very tough policy at AIM forbidding producers and agents to engage in casting activities at the clinic. I can just hear the producers howling if we allowed a performers' union to recruit there while producers are barred from doing so. I'm afraid we have to observe a certain consistency when it comes to things like this. We can sponsor discussion groups and offer education and counseling, but we can't involve ourselves directly in labor/management relations beyond our medical mandate.

Speaking strictly for myself and not in any official capacity, I think a performers' union could be a good thing, but it would require a stable, determined group of regular performers willing to do the hard work of organizing their peers and able to withstand easily anticipated pressures from management. Several attempts have been made over the years to start such a union, or at least an association to speak on the performers' behalf, but nobody has had the will to stick with it long enough to bring any of these attempts to fruition. I wouldn't say I have no hope for such a thing, but the results so far aren't very encouraging.

I suppose the most basic problem is a lack of community solidarity. Performers tend to be loners in some respects, highly protective of their individual rights and choices and unwilling to be told what to do by anybody, even if it's for their own good. There wlll always be performers who will violate whatever rules are made in order to make an extra buck, and producers willing to pay that extra buck. Organizing paycheck-to-paycheck workers to support standards that may result in lost revenues is quite an uphill climb. I wish the best to anyone who cares to attempt it.

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I would think so, since the nasty stuff isn't even from your own body, but I'm not knowledgable enough on this kind of thing.

Funny thing, is this would not have bothered me if I wasn't aware of just how bad A2P can be to the performers.

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a. What range or types of problems (irritations, infections) are you seeing from ATM (on self, not ATOGM)? Are the problems gastroinstestinal or nose/throat?

b. What is the probability (%) or frequency (x times out of y exposures) of infection / problems?

c. What can an actress do to decrease the probability before, during, and after a scene from ATM?

d. What do you think actresses really feel about ATM? ATOGM?

e. Do you ask your significant others ever to perform ATM or ATOGM in your personal life? Why or Why not?

Thanks,

Gman

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a. What range or types of problems (irritations, infections) are you seeing from ATM (on self, not ATOGM)? Are the problems gastroinstestinal or nose/throat?

Most commonly, we see simple dysentery, though a more dangerous E Coli infection is certainly possible. That we haven't had to treat much E Coli speaks to the probable factors discussed in my previous post. Generally, the GI tract is pretty well defended against its own organisms. This danger would obviously be somewhat greater with ATOGM, because again we would be talking about transfering organisms from one body to another, as opposed to one body part to another.

I don't recall reports of any infections in the mouth or throat, but that doesn't mean there haven't been any or that it couldn't happen. Any kind of open wound or lesion in the mouth would make this much more likely.

b. What is the probability (%) or frequency (x times out of y exposures) of infection / problems?

Hard to say. Girls who do it a lot generally report nothing more serious than an occasional upset stomach for a day or two, but that's not a guarantee for anybody else. Maybe some performers might offer their experiences here.

c. What can an actress do to decrease the probability before, during, and after a scene from ATM?

Obviously, the cleaner the dick or other object that enters the mouth, the less likely it is to cause a problem. A quick cut for a wipe down in between is probably the best fix. I know it diminishes the heat factor for some viewers, but it lowers the risk level to nearly zip. At the opposite end of the risk scale, anything with actual fecal material on it is not suitable for oral consumption. It happens, as another thread on this site clearly shows, but I'm betting that those scenes are frequently followed by trips to the doctor.

Prophylaxis after the fact is essentially useless. An anti-bacterial mouthwash like Hydrogen Peroxide, for example, only kills bacteria in mouth, when any real problem is more likely to result from migration of bacteria down the esophagus during the act. A good rinse doesn't hurt anything, but it won't prevent a lower GI infection from developing.

d. What do you think actresses really feel about ATM? ATOGM?

I know some who think its hot and nasty and others who find it totally revolting and wouldn't do it for any amount of money. I admit I am often a bit amazed by how many performers do it spontaneously with no coachng from the director. They may be doing for their own amusment or because they think their fans want to see it. Again, I think performers themselves can tell us more.

e. Do you ask your significant others ever to perform ATM or ATOGM in your personal life? Why or Why not?

I've never asked them to, but a few have surprised me by doing it of their own accord. If they're comfortable with the idea, I don't try to stop them, but it's not a thing I'd ever push for. I trust my partners to know their own bodies when it comes to this particular practice. However, if a girl asked me to do an ATP, I would refuse under any circumstances. The risk is just unacceptable.

Thanks,

You're certainly welcome.
Gman

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I wouldn't do ATM at home. I don't particularly think it is disgusting or so but I simply don't personally get turned on by it. I don't mind doing it on camera as it seems to be such a big turn on for the viewer.

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Do you think ATP:

a) Is an act that goes beyond the reasonably safe "line"? (i.e. it is not reasonably safe to expose an employee to certain environmental hazards because there is a reasonable chance they may be harmed in some way)

b) obligates the producer / director to pay for any negative consequences arising out of ATP such as medical bills, lost wages?

c) In the case where an Actress is not fully informed of the risks while the producer / director is aware, the producer / director are negligent?

If you have become ill from ATP, but never from ATM, do you think ATM (self) is really unhealthy or has any significant risks at all?

Gman

p.s. Katja and Ernest. You both are always so responsive, honest, and straight-up in your replies. I appreciate both of your individual level of participation at ADT.

Edited by - gman on 12/9/2005 11:50:01 PM

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I don't think it will happen in the next future that directors are going to pay for medical bills. It's up to the talent to deal with it. Health insurance is not that outrageously expensive compared to what talent makes a scene.

How do you prove talent didn't know about the potential risks? I don't think that it's a director's job to be educator about these things. The relationship between director and talent is a business thing, it's not that these young girls need another daddy or mommy.

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a) Is an act that goes beyond the reasonably safe "line"? (i.e. it is not reasonably safe to expose an employee to certain environmental hazards because there is a reasonable chance they may be harmed in some way)

Yes, I do. There's no way to ban it that doesn't involve other issues I've already addressed, but I think an industry standard, if such a thing could be created, would oppose this practice, unless there is a clean-up in between.

b) obligates the producer / director to pay for any negative consequences arising out of ATP such as medical bills, lost wages?

The problem here is proof. If a performer does ATP for more than one company, responsibility is difficult to establish, as she may have contracted an infection on any of the sets where she did it. It would be a nice gesture for the producer to pick up the tab, but it would be better just not to shoot ATP.

c) In the case where an Actress is not fully informed of the risks while the producer / director is aware, the producer / director are negligent?

Not in a legal way. It is, as Katja says, up to performers to inform themselves of what behaviors are high-risk. I do think the producer/director under the circumstances you describe is behaving irresponsibly, but I doubt it would meet the legal standard for negligence.

If you have become ill from ATP, but never from ATM, do you think ATM (self) is really unhealthy or has any significant risks at all?

Depends on how you define significant. While I wouldn't call it healthy, the minor GI complications for which it puts a performer at peril couldn't really be considered dangerous in the sense of requiring medical treatment, loss of work, lasting ill-effects, etc. However, to a performer sweating through a couple of days of the runs, the risks might look quite different.

I think we have to make a distinction here between unsafe and merely unwise. ATP is in the first category, ATM, at worst, in the second.

Again, thanks for the props. It's a welcome change from the greetings I frequently get around here.

Edited by - ernestgreene on 12/10/2005 1:41:33 PM

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Edited by - ernestgreene on 12/10/2005 2:59:00 PM

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Though I did in a way it wasn't my intention to generalize but to give some people a wake up call about what kind of activities some of their colleagues are involved in. To be most careful in your private sex life is worth nothing if others manage to fuck risks up that way. I think performer have a certain responsibility towards their sex-partners that advances into the sphere of your private sexlife, as careless behaviour can endanger not only your own health, but probably I am alone on that one. If you are at low, mid or high risk depends on whom you work with more than anything. You are only as safe as the most reckless performer you work with is careful. So it's up to the performers to abandon high risk internal shots and to choose their partners wisely once you are in a position to make a request list.
Put simple, there are not only "high risk acts" but also "high risk partners".

A porn performer in a "hot month" can have a lot of high-risk sex in the timeframe HIV tests lag behind.
While I agree that these tests do serve the safety of the performer community, they do not even remotely give the safety you would need to justify certain high risk acts. As such acts are common practice in gonzo, I can just as well say performers, especially new performers, are an ultra-high risk group to STDs.
It doesn't help much if established performers speak out against these practices. Those who dabble in porn are at the highest risk. Some utterly ruthless producers involved in the American gonzo-industry recruit new unexperienced talent to exploit for dangerous fetishes all the time (and not only in their own country!), supported by a rather small but very active community of unethical consumers who buy this stuff (anal creampie gangbangs, a2p galore etc.).

"BTW, "civilians" also come into AIM, and we find more positive tests for all kinds of STDs among them than among our regular clients."
I think that lies in the nature of being a first timer (testing) and why they come to AIM (reason).

"Talent rates are the highest they've ever been in the history of porn. Not only are girls better compensated then at any previous point, but at long last, guys are starting to get paid commensurate with their abilities. "

As I said numerous times before, in my point of view performer get paid for delivering hot sex scenes to the camera, they don't get paid for taking extraordinary health risks. So I have reservations wether you should say talent gets paid "commensurate". A known performer might get x times the amount of a new performer and is likely able to further minimize risks having more options.(bigger To-Don't Lists, known partners etc.) I don't think Jessica Dee got compensated for her "workplace accident" nor does this word really fit in this context . Once again the newcomers are the weakest players. Just like a "porn star" Hollywood actors might increase their rates exponential over their career. However there are trade unions and mandatory insurances etc. that protect and ensure certain working conditions right from the start. And in case of porn we are not talking about unrestricted hours, no enforced turn-around or required meal breaks but about performers who are put at risk to catch a sometimes lethal (HIV->AIDS) other times crushing (infertility) disease.

"There will always be performers who will violate whatever rules are made in order to make an extra buck, and producers willing to pay that extra buck."

While I know this to be true it does not speak against a talent union. However the fact AIM cannot affiliate or support any union does put a big dent in my idea how to establish such a thing. In a way it even plays in the hands of those who want to replace AIM with a government institution that enforces condoms and keeps testing alive at least in a voluntary way by threating producers with civil sues for damages due to health cost mitigation for treatment of talents without health insurances. That way it would be of vital interest for producers to ensure performers safety unless they want to pay for all sequent health costs in case of an infection.
In doubt all producers in line for exposing a talent to certain health risks at a certain time frame had to assume liability. American porn actors would finally have the same rights and protection as in similar jobs that put people at health risks.
However given the hostility of your gov towards porn such a 'complete' solution seems rather unlikely. You might end up with mandatory condoms and a big chaos until the last company sets sail to whatever State in America allows them to continue their old course.
Besides I fail to see why a gov that outlaws sexworkers should come up with education and counseling programs for former porn performers like those offered by AIM.
On the other hand I also fail to see why AIM couldn't continue to offer such services, except for when you are "forced" to go out of business by officials.
What I want to see is progress from an industry that protects some chosen ones to an industry that cares about all talent. And if that means a whole branch of obstinate low-budget producers has to be wiped than it is like that.
Let's face it, a heavy (maybe ill-fated) intervention by government regulators, as mandatory condoms undoubtful are, is much more likely than that we will ever see an "official ban" on internal cumshots. The later, even done on a voluntary basis, might prove to be enough to prevent the next outbreak. However if things proceed as they are, with internal ejaculation being a porn industry favorite of late, the next outbreak is as guaranteed as night follows day. And be assured some quite powerful lobbies are already in position to get off the starting blocks.

"I suppose the most basic problem is a lack of community solidarity."
It seems to work better on part of the male performers. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that many female performers enter the biz just for a short time or work in unsteady intervals than just with unwillingness to change things for the better.
There might also be a lack of personal leadership examples outside the world of Wicked and Vivid.
For the idea to have any success such a union had to provide obvious benefits for it's members like legal and financial advice or private health care plans. But above all protection from unsafe and unethical working conditions no other industry would get away with.

"Organizing paycheck-to-paycheck workers to support standards that may result in lost revenues is quite an uphill climb."
Yes, however these losses would just be of temporary nature. Once such safer sex standards are established all performers would benefit, even those trapped in dependences not able to fight for a change on their own.

Given the fact how thankful people are for your advice on health issues on this message board fortifies my assumption that AIM sponsored discussion boards outside the weird world of gossip and industry news sites would be much welcomed. Maybe they are already there so don't jump at me. On your website I only found an email address aim@aim-med.org, maybe you could get some of your staff to administrate such a discussion group for health issues concerning the sex biz and as a place for talent to exchange some experiences with each other without all the commerce talk.
Maybe you could even expand your team with a few performers helping out voluntary.

This would not be a union by any means but rather another counseling/health service offered to AIM customers. So there is no danger to lose your tax-free status. Also to overcome one's inhibitions to post on such a message board might be easier for some than to write to an impersonal email. Not to speak of the various other benefits a discussion group has to exchange information that people might find helpful.

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It must also be a great buzz the first time another girl does ATOGM from your ass - knowing that she's tasting deep inside you.

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Ernest Green wrote:
"I'm not so sure these generalizations stand up on closer examination, starting with the assumption that performers are an ultra-high risk group"

"To be most careful in your private sex life is worth nothing if others manage to fuck risks up that way. I think performer have a certain responsibility towards their sex-partners that advances into the sphere of your private sexlife, as careless behaviour can endanger not only your own health, but probably I am alone on that one."

Far from it. I agree with you completely here. At AIM, we frequently say that what we fear isn't so much an outbreak of disease from within the industry as a break-in from the outside world. What performers do in their off-time is just as important as what they do on the set. We have no way of testing or partner tracing their outside contacts, so this is truly a matter of ethics and trust. Whatever protections we put in place for work are undermined if performers behave irresponsibly in their private lives."

" If you are at low, mid or high risk depends on whom you work with more than anything."

Again, right on target. While some acts carry higher risks than others with a partner who is infected or status-unknown, there is no risk with an uninfected partner. Knowing who you're working with and refusing to work with anybody about whom you have concerns is a good way to enjoy a long, healthy career in porn.

"A porn performer in a "hot month" can have a lot of high-risk sex in the timeframe HIV tests lag behind.
While I agree that these tests do serve the safety of the performer community, they do not even remotely give the safety you would need to justify certain high risk acts. As such acts are common practice in gonzo, I can just as well say performers, especially new performers, are an ultra-high risk group to STDs."

Here, I agree with everything except the last sentence. New performers, at least until they have something of a testing history, are a bit higher risk than those who have been in the data base longer, but the initial screening elminates those who are an obvious danger. As to the rest of the performer community, I still stand by our existing statistics, which make it pretty clear that they are at lower risk than the general population, owing to the frequency of testing and the immediate treatment given to those infected with minor STDs. You're certainly right about the window period. It's not very long, and a fairly unusual set of circumstances is required for a performer to become infectious between tests, although we know it can happen. You're absolutely right, however, about high-risk behaviors. Given that we can't be 100% sure about any individuals status at a given moment, it's just insane to internal pops and other things that amplify the risks already there.

"It doesn't help much if established performers speak out against these practices. Those who dabble in porn are at the highest risk. Some utterly ruthless producers involved in the American gonzo-industry recruit new unexperienced talent to exploit for dangerous fetishes all the time (and not only in their own country!), supported by a rather small but very active community of unethical consumers who buy this stuff (anal creampie gangbangs, a2p galore etc.)."

Right again, although I do think it helps when respected figures in the industry speak out against high-risk practices. At AIM, we've found peer-to-peer counseling our most effective tool in getting performers to protect themselves. The fact that we rely on people with working backgrounds in the industry rather than white-coated public health types is one reason we're able to get through to some very stubborn young people, though not always.

However, you're correct about the problem we face with certain producers, who don't hesitate to wave fists full of money at new players and tell them all kinds of reassuring lies to get them to do things they shouldn't. I make no secret of the fact that I think this community would be a better place if some of these guys took up some other occupation.

"BTW, "civilians" also come into AIM, and we find more positive tests for all kinds of STDs among them than among our regular clients."
"I think that lies in the nature of being a first timer (testing) and why they come to AIM (reason)."

Probably a factor, to be sure, but the official statistics kept by government agencies do reflect substantially higher STD rates among non-performers of the same age group than among porn players, so the basic premise is still sound. If I had to choose between having unprotected sex with a regularly tested performer of with some girl I met out in the world, I'd go with the performer every time.

"Talent rates are the highest they've ever been in the history of porn. Not only are girls better compensated then at any previous point, but at long last, guys are starting to get paid commensurate with their abilities. "

:"As I said numerous times before, in my point of view performer get paid for delivering hot sex scenes to the camera, they don't get paid for taking extraordinary health risks. So I have reservations wether you should say talent gets paid "commensurate".

I wasn't talking about risks in this particular statement, but rather about abilities. A general charge was being laid that conditions in the industry are worse than ever, when overall they're better than ever. Certainly, proper compensation for good work contributes to that view, as does a better, though not perfect, safety net than we had before. Bear in mind that I've been working in this business for twenty+ years, and I can tell you there is no comparison between working conditions back then and what we have now. It's not a worker's paradise by any means, but it's much improved over what it used to be.

"A known performer might get x times the amount of a new performer and is likely able to further minimize risks having more options.(bigger To-Don't Lists, known partners etc.) I don't think Jessica Dee got compensated for her "workplace accident" nor does this word really fit in this context . Once again the newcomers are the weakest players. Just like a "porn star" Hollywood actors might increase their rates exponential over their career. However there are trade unions and mandatory insurances etc. that protect and ensure certain working conditions right from the start. And in case of porn we are not talking about unrestricted hours, no enforced turn-around or required meal breaks but about performers who are put at risk to catch a sometimes lethal (HIV->AIDS) other times crushing (infertility) disease."

We still have a long way to go on all these issues. The important questions concern how best to achieve progress.

"There will always be performers who will violate whatever rules are made in order to make an extra buck, and producers willing to pay that extra buck."

"While I know this to be true it does not speak against a talent union. However the fact AIM cannot affiliate or support any union does put a big dent in my idea how to establish such a thing. In a way it even plays in the hands of those who want to replace AIM with a government institution that enforces condoms and keeps testing alive at least in a voluntary way by threating producers with civil sues for damages due to health cost mitigation for treatment of talents without health insurances. That way it would be of vital interest for producers to ensure performers safety unless they want to pay for all sequent health costs in case of an infection. "

Well, here is where we part company again. If there were a mandatory condom law and a producer obeyed it, but testing could no longer be required, there would be nothing to stop a producer from hiring an HIV+ player, and if infection resulted despite adherence to the legal requirements, the producer would be immunized from legal action and the performer would have nothing better to fall back on than the state workman's comp system, which is quite weak here. If the government steps in, voluntary testing is likely to become extremely haphazard. It's hard enough to bet people in for their tests when they know they must have them to work. If they could work without them, relying on barriers only, and producers didn't have to insist on testing, testing would probably fall by the way pretty quickly.

"In doubt all producers in line for exposing a talent to certain health risks at a certain time frame had to assume liability. American porn actors would finally have the same rights and protection as in similar jobs that put people at health risks. "

If only ...

"However given the hostility of your gov towards porn such a 'complete' solution seems rather unlikely. You might end up with mandatory condoms and a big chaos until the last company sets sail to whatever State in America allows them to continue their old course.
Besides I fail to see why a gov that outlaws sexworkers should come up with education and counseling programs for former porn performers like those offered by AIM."

Here you get to the heart of the problem. Since the political system here is basically hostile to porn, there's simply no way an official program would work to the advantage of either performers or producers. It would be a burden to both and a help to neither. Only total legalization of sex work in this country could create an atmosphere in which government might play a constructive role in protecting sex workers.

"On the other hand I also fail to see why AIM couldn't continue to offer such services, except for when you are "forced" to go out of business by officials."

Of course, that's the whole problem. The officials who would be responsible have already made it clear that they would be happier of AIM just went away. They want control over the things we're already doing, and their motives are quite different from ours.

"What I want to see is progress from an industry that protects some chosen ones to an industry that cares about all talent. And if that means a whole branch of obstinate low-budget producers has to be wiped than it is like that."

Amen.

"Let's face it, a heavy (maybe ill-fated) intervention by government regulators, as mandatory condoms undoubtful are, is much more likely than that we will ever see an "official ban" on internal cumshots. The later, even done on a voluntary basis, might prove to be enough to prevent the next outbreak. However if things proceed as they are, with internal ejaculation being a porn industry favorite of late, the next outbreak is as guaranteed as night follows day. And be assured some quite powerful lobbies are already in position to get off the starting blocks."

To me, this is your most important point. Granted that government intervention is likely to be hostile and possibly even fatal to this industry, it certainly behooves us to clean up our own act. This will require a much higher level of responsibility from both performers and producers. Our enemies are out there and if we play into their hands, what can we expect to happen? I'm always surprised that such common sense is a hard sell to a lot of these people. It's their own best interests I'm trying to get them to see.

"I suppose the most basic problem is a lack of community solidarity."

"It seems to work better on part of the male performers. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that many female performers enter the biz just for a short time or work in unsteady intervals than just with unwillingness to change things for the better."

Absolutely right on this. It's not so much unwillingness on the part of female talent as inexperience. The guys stick around long enough to understand the issues a bit better. Interestingly, when there was talk about forming a union last spring, it was mostly male players who pushed for it.

"There might also be a lack of personal leadership examples outside the world of Wicked and Vivid.
For the idea to have any success such a union had to provide obvious benefits for it's members like legal and financial advice or private health care plans. But above all protection from unsafe and unethical working conditions no other industry would get away with."

The problem here, quite bluntly, is union busting. Most producers, like any other management types in any other business, prefer a non-union working environment. instead of supporting a union, which would be in their long-term interest, they would do everything they could to keep such a union from becoming powerful enough to impose on their way of doing business. This is a downside of porn's style of frontier capitalism, and I think it sucks. I wish performers would organize and stand up to management pressures, but I've been saying that for two decades and so far, not much luck.

"Organizing paycheck-to-paycheck workers to support standards that may result in lost revenues is quite an uphill climb."

"Yes, however these losses would just be of temporary nature. Once such safer sex standards are established all performers would benefit, even those trapped in dependences not able to fight for a change on their own."

Try selling that idea to a twenty-year-old struggling to make the payments on a car he or she can't afford and shouldn't have bought. Addiction to quick money is one of the worst problems we face with new performers. They don't think they'll be here long enough for these concerns to matter to them.

"Given the fact how thankful people are for your advice on health issues on this message board fortifies my assumption that AIM sponsored discussion boards outside the weird world of gossip and industry news sites would be much welcomed. Maybe they are already there so don't jump at me. On your website I only found an email address aim@aim-med.org, maybe you could get some of your staff to administrate such a discussion group for health issues concerning the sex biz and as a place for talent to exchange some experiences with each other without all the commerce talk."

I promise not to jump on you about it, but AIM does offer group as well as indivdual counseling. Sadly, our group discussions don't draw as many performers as we'd like, and most of those who attend are, predictably, those who need them least. I guess the others are too busy with Porn Star Karaoke. That's why we generally end up counseling them as individuals, and often after they've had a problem of some kind.

I do think an open forum on the Web site would be a good thing, but it requires staff to moderate if it's to be informative and not just a place to hurl accusations and air complaints, and we don't have the resources to handle it just now. But it's a good idea for the future for sure.

"Maybe you could even expand your team with a few performers helping out voluntary. "

We do have performers who help us with fund-raisers and such, but it's proved difficult to get them to stick with longer-term service reliably. Again, work and play both come before community concerns with many of them.

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Thanks for your virtuous patience Ernest, seems we pretty much hijacked this one.
Okay, let's get straight to the few points we do not agree about.

Ernest Greene wrote:

"Since the political system here is basically hostile to porn, there's simply no way an official program would work to the advantage of either performers or producers. It would be a burden to both and a help to neither. Only total legalization of sex work in this country could create an atmosphere in which government might play a constructive role in protecting sex workers."

"The officials who would be responsible have already made it clear that they would be happier of AIM just went away. They want control over the things we're already doing, and their motives are quite different from ours."

Hmm I think you have to help me on this one, how can the Californian government legally forbid AIM to voluntary test performer/civilians or offer honorary health education?
Also in another context you said no producer can be forced to hire a certain talent, well spotted. So how can you prove legally effective if a talent was refused because she had too much freckles and not because s/he did not show up with her voluntary HIV test? Appears to be a grandiose task for an ACLU observer.
Sure ACLU's attempts to tie HIV testing for sex workers to employment discrimination are beyond a joke, however you can still have voluntary testing going and there's about nothing they can do to prohibit it. (On a sidenote, I read about a case where an appellate division uphold HIV testing in sexual assaults against some ACLU lobbyists, since the legislature could have viewed tests under such circumstances as "useful, and thus reasonable". You see, sometimes rationality wins over blindfolded principle morons even in America )

As already said I do see a problem, but I just don't see why to amplify the risk of producers/performers naive enough to think now that there are condoms there is no need for testing anymore to a point where mandatory condoms suddenly equals no testing at all. Very likely these people you refer to are the same who do shoot certain high-risk acts right now anyway , so why not take away some of the opportunities for them to take silly risks.

"a burden to both and a help to neither"
Well, once more it comes down to this: What is more dangerous? A majority of performer tested regularly (voluntary like it is now) using condoms (mandatory) or everybody gonzo going bareback shooting high risk unprotected sex relying on a test that was never made to monitor a population in that way (as it was made under different medical objectives) and can not protect sufficiently against high risk behaviour (as many posters, including yourself, already pointed out).
The few who'd skip testing in favor of condoms you can write off as nuts. You can never protect people that do not want to be protected. The clever ones would realize now they finally have the chance to work with condoms on every set they go. No if, no but.
For most talent it would not be an illusion anymore to get work with condoms since they are required, that you request to see other peoples tests or leave a set would fall in your own responsibility, it is nothing compared to the almost impossible task for a newcomer to enforce condom use on your own.

Should some of the more reckless producers think there is no money to be made in porn without internal pops then they can just as well look out for a new job, or be hustled from State to State (I doubt the "worst of the worst" have enough hidden reserves for such a move anyway and so they would adapt or go back on public assistance). Those exemplary companies who have a no internals or even stronger safer-sex policy right now would certainly continue with regular testing.

Again, I, with my very limited knowledge of American jurisprudence *cough*, don't see how AIM, in it's function as a non profit organization carrying out voluntary public services, could be attacked on the basis that some official spokesman doesn't "wish" to see them anymore. I think you could co-exist with mandatory condoms and remain legally unaffected just fine. What would be next? Closing all hospitals that offer HIV tests?

- Imho, the lawful introduction of condoms does not put AIM out of service. Also I doubt such a feared shutdown is legally enforceable.

- Mandatory condoms do NOT equal no testing. The risk of increased(?) responsibility on the actors' side to keep voluntary testing alive is outweighed by the benefits of using condoms.

- ACLU has NO chance to hinder a performer from making voluntary HIV tests or requesting to see such tests from other performers on a set.

- Further ACLU has little chance to effectively invade the producers "freedom of choice" when it comes to casting questions (HIV-test).

- Last but not least it should not be ruled out that ACLU can be pushed back by proving their "no HIV tests for employment" claim wrongful and unreasonable in court given the special circumstances applying to sex workers (including porn performers). It has been done before in cases on similar topics (hiv testing after sexual assault). Imho, no idea of individual civil rights can be granted limitless as you have to restrain certain rights once you start damaging others in unreasonable ways.

However I admit that a health/testing standard is going to have to be set by law sooner or later, and that in order to create a "non porn hostile" environment the total legalization of prostitution is a core thing to do. Which, BTW, goes well along with your most basic legal principle that you can not regulate and forbid something at the same time. In fact I addressed this topic in many of my older posts about prostitution but never was there the slightest chance of getting through this wall of ignorance and outspoken resentment. Given that this is a porn discussion board makes me wonder how bad it must be in more "civil" parts of the American society. However in order to improve working conditions for talent you can not wait for such kind of changes in society to take place, so let's better focus on more more achievable goals here.

I really hope this voluntary "seal of aproval" carries fruit and shows that providing safer working conditions does not have to go hand in hand with financial losses but rather the opposite. Who knows maybe new performers find their way in the sex biz attracted by safer working conditions. Condom porn should be promoted as financially rewarding to both performers and producers.

I also hope such an "online forum" (I messed it with the term discussion group) on the AIM website can be realized soon enough. I can imagine you want a full staff of medical educated professionals to assure qualified advise and therefore delay this idea until you have the resources.
How about you just split the forum in two parts: One for specific medical questions to be answered by professionals only (the same people who answer all the emails) and one -industry only- part, moderated voluntary by talent where people can air whatever complaints they have. You said you want the bullies out, so why not give performers a platform in a trustworthy environment? Also your counseling staff would likely notice people who need help more effective than with a weekly discussion group at some AIM building. As already mentioned you could use AIM ID's for the accounts so there would be much less disturbance than if it was a public message board with lots of anonymous posters. You might even give AIM customers the chance to hide their names but you could still contact them most personal outside the forum as you know who is talking.

-

Truth be told I do not like the idea of mandatory condoms for everything all that much. Just imagine a blowjob with condom. bah. However if things keep going at current pace Americans might soon welcome this scenario and then it's too late for a "sensitive rule set". Just take a look at the front page of ADT, the new releases list reads like a price sheet of a bakery store. I don't claim to have the ultimate solution, I just think it can't go on like that, if only all companies would at least follow the example of Evil Angel.

Unlike you, Ernest, I do really think mandatory condoms for penetration (not oral) can and should be enforced on ALL producers. BTW, you could still do external cumshots or whatever turns the majority of viewers on. For a gov it's easy to make sure no European imports fill any gap in demand, and I still do not buy this underground market thing.

So the new question is not so much if mandatory condoms for penetration can be established without endangering AIM's support network and regular testing, I argue they can, but much more if a gov intervention in the current porn-hostile environment would introduce a devasting form of regulation instead demolishing any commerce and making shooting porn as we know it impossible in California (like Cal-OHSA astronaut sex). Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough to answer this question.

My point was merely that a rule set that enforces mandatory condoms but at the same time takes the realities of the business into account is thinkable to the advantage of performers. If it can be done under your current gov is another question. That it can be done "voluntary" and financially rewarding is out of question as demonstrated by Vivid and Wicked.

For the new year I wish you much luck and lots of good ideas to convince a stubborn industry that change is necessary, of course you will probably need a little more than that.
Oh and have a Merry Chrismukkah you two.

X-Ray

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Welcome back, my friend, though I fear we may have lost our audience on this thread. And let me start at the bottom by returning your holiday greetings from the both of us. May yours be joyful as well.

As to our disagreements, I suspect they're pretty much impossible to reconcile, which is unfortunate, especially for me. I only wish the solutions you propose were as easy as you make them sound.

Of the many, many evil lies told about AIM was the slam from a public health official I won't name at a public forum I attended in which he flat-out accused us of opposing condom use. That's just wrong. I hope your know that if I had my way, condoms for intercourse would be standard -although I would like to see some exceptions, such as for married couples working exclusively with each other.

However, I don't think either of us will get what we want, and not for medically sound reasons but rather because of the tormented nature of politics in this country regarding porn. Let me take on a few of your typically well-made points here, one at a time:

"Hmm I think you have to help me on this one, how can the Californian government legally forbid AIM to voluntary test performer/civilians or offer honorary health education?"

On the education part, they can't. But the local authorities here have made no secret of their preference for a government-run "voluntary" program using the ELISA, which is what they do in their other walk-in testing facilities. The test they offer would be cheaper - though totally useless for porn - and they would argue that, with mandatory barriers, it would be adequate. In short, they would try to drive AIM out of business by competition, and competing with government agencies is very difficult here.

Again, this would mean relying on performers to take a more expensive test on their own when government officials were telling them they didn't need it and producers couldn't require it. It would be wrong to assume that large numbers of performers wouldn't abandon the PCR-DNA test under such circumstances.

"Also in another context you said no producer can be forced to hire a certain talent, well spotted. So how can you prove legally effective if a talent was refused because she had too much freckles and not because s/he did not show up with her voluntary HIV test? Appears to be a grandiose task for an ACLU observer."

Clearly, you have no idea of how fiercely these anti-discrimination ordinances are enforced over here. A producer might get away with such a gambit once or twice, but if it began to happen widely in the industry, litigation would become inevitable, and that costs producers money. One producer loses a case and has to pay a judgement for having refused to hire a performer without a test and then claiming some other reason and no producer would ever demand to look at a test again.

There would be no looking the other way on this deal. Too much money has already been paid out in other fields for similar offenses. From a legal point of view, what you're suggesting is similar to refusing to hire someone for racial reasons and then claiming the real reason was because the employer didn't like the color of his tie instead of his skin. That's been tried here and the courts take a dim view of it.

"Sure ACLU's attempts to tie HIV testing for sex workers to employment discrimination are beyond a joke, however you can still have voluntary testing going and there's about nothing they can do to prohibit it. (On a sidenote, I read about a case where an appellate division uphold HIV testing in sexual assaults against some ACLU lobbyists, since the legislature could have viewed tests under such circumstances as "useful, and thus reasonable". You see, sometimes rationality wins over blindfolded principle morons even in America )"

You are talking about the difference between civil and criminal law. The exception for rape cases was made because the situations involved constituted emergency medical treatment for crime victims. Not comparable to civil regulations for employment discrimination. The state could and would argue that the performer was putting him or herself at risk voluntarily, and therefore the state could not invoke the "useful, and thus reasonable" grounds you suggest.

"As already said I do see a problem, but I just don't see why to amplify the risk of producers/performers naive enough to think now that there are condoms there is no need for testing anymore to a point where mandatory condoms suddenly equals no testing at all."

It wouldn't be sudden. It would be a gradual erosion of what would come to be seen as a needless, troublesome expense once it was no longer a condition of hiring. You'd be surprised, and horrified, if you had any idea how readily performers would abandon testing if they could get away without having to pay for it. Some would surely continue to test and insist on working only with others who do, but in a matter of a year or so, they would be down to a minority that couldn't support a voluntary testing program. In order to deliver the PCR-DNA test at our current price, we need to do about 40 tests a day. If that number dropped to, say, ten, the price would double and then we would lose even more clients. If the PCR-DNA went to 200 bucks and we couldn't get overnight results anymore, I think you'd see voluntary testing fade away all too soon.

"Again, I, with my very limited knowledge of American jurisprudence *cough*, don't see how AIM, in it's function as a non profit organization carrying out voluntary public services, could be attacked on the basis that some official spokesman doesn't "wish" to see them anymore. I think you could co-exist with mandatory condoms and remain legally unaffected just fine. What would be next? Closing all hospitals that offer HIV tests?

- Imho, the lawful introduction of condoms does not put AIM out of service. Also I doubt such a feared shutdown is legally enforceable."

Again, we're not talking about a shutdown, just a hostile environment that makes the kind of testing we do too expensive and difficult to continue for the majority of performers. That, of course, is exactly what the offiicials involved would like to see. Then they could congratulate themselves on what a great job they're doing of keeping the infection rate down to ten percent, as it is in county-run programs now. They really do hate us for doing a better job than they do.

"- Mandatory condoms do NOT equal no testing. The risk of increased(?) responsibility on the actors' side to keep voluntary testing alive is outweighed by the benefits of using condoms."

Here, your logic falls apart completely. If you feel we can't trust performers to act in their own best interests under the current system, why would they suddenly become more responsible under a system that doesn't require them to test in order to work? At the very least, based on the pre-AIM situation here, we know from experience that without standardized testing, different performers would have different rules for themselves in terms for frequency, type of test used and where taken, which would mean an end to our centralized data base that can quickly detect and track down breakthroughs like last spring.

This is a prescription for chaos. The system we have now is an amazing example of community consensus health policy. Take mutually agreed testing protocols out of that system and everybody does or does not do what he or she pleases. No thanks.

"- ACLU has NO chance to hinder a performer from making voluntary HIV tests or requesting to see such tests from other performers on a set."

Wrong again. If Performer A demands a test of Performer B and Performer B refuses to provide it, the producer, faced with a choice of using one or the other, may fire Performer B, opening the door to a discrimination suit. Existing law forbids not only employers but also unions and employees to insist on discriminatory hiring practices. And let me remind you once again that it would be illegal under California law to deny employment even to sex performers on the basis of being HIV+. Ridiculous as this sounds, it is the law.

"- Last but not least it should not be ruled out that ACLU can be pushed back by proving their "no HIV tests for employment" claim wrongful and unreasonable in court given the special circumstances applying to sex workers (including porn performers). It has been done before in cases on similar topics (hiv testing after sexual assault). Imho, no idea of individual civil rights can be granted limitless as you have to restrain certain rights once you start damaging others in unreasonable ways."

A perfectly sensible proposition, but if it failed a single trial test, the doors of porn would be flung wide open to HIV+ players. I, for one, don't care to take that risk. I've seen enough legal action here to know how often it flies in the face of common sense.

"However I admit that a health/testing standard is going to have to be set by law sooner or later, and that in order to create a "non porn hostile" environment the total legalization of prostitution is a core thing to do. Which, BTW, goes well along with your most basic legal principle that you can not regulate and forbid something at the same time. In fact I addressed this topic in many of my older posts about prostitution but never was there the slightest chance of getting through this wall of ignorance and outspoken resentment. Given that this is a porn discussion board makes me wonder how bad it must be in more "civil" parts of the American society. However in order to improve working conditions for talent you can not wait for such kind of changes in society to take place, so let's better focus on more more achievable goals here."

Here you're making my cae better than your own. You acknowlede the deep prejudice against sex work and sex workers here and propose we focus on achievable goals. That's exactly what AIM does. Voluntary universal testing is an achievable goal, as we've proved for 8 years. Mandatory condoms without the loss of testing is not achievable under existing law, period.

"I also hope such an "online forum" (I messed it with the term discussion group) on the AIM website can be realized soon enough. "

I like everything about this proposal and intend to introduce it at the next AIM board of directors meeting. Thanks for the support on it.

"Truth be told I do not like the idea of mandatory condoms for everything all that much. Just imagine a blowjob with condom. bah. However if things keep going at current pace Americans might soon welcome this scenario and then it's too late for a "sensitive rule set"."

At the hearings last spring, the representatives of Cal-OHSA made it very clear tha they had no intention of negotiating sensitive rule set with the industry. Remember, their real preference is that we would just go away. They will never agree reasonable measures that allow porn to continue to be shot when they basically want it prohibited. It would be very risky for any elected politicians - who are the only people capable of imposing reasonable standards on regulatory agencies - to do so for porn in the face of widespread public hostility toward the whole industry. No legislator can afford to be seen as pro-porn and opposing the strictest possible regulations.

Right now, at he federal level, hearings are being held on new laws concerning porn distribution and the legislative committees holding the hearings have repeatedly refused to allow industry representatives to participate in the hearings in any way. Once again, I must remind you that this is America, not Europe.

"My point was merely that a rule set that enforces mandatory condoms but at the same time takes the realities of the business into account is thinkable to the advantage of performers. If it can be done under your current gov is another question. That it can be done "voluntary" and financially rewarding is out of question as demonstrated by Vivid and Wicked."

All I can say is, see my previous response. Vivid and Wicked do what they do voluntarily and it works for their audience. For what it's worth, I think most companies could do the same. But that is not the agenda of government in this matter and until there is a change of political attitude here, you won't see any workable rules made mandatory, only the unworkable kind.

This conversation is not really about what we want. It's about what we can get. Now I ask you, would you abandon what we have now in favor of a system that mandated condoms and all kinds of other behavioral changes at the cost of universal PCR-DNA testing? No matter how hard you try to deny that this is the choice we face, legally, that is exactly the situation.

Before you answer, I would ask you to look again at the statistics under the current program. Don't you think what we have now is better than LA County's "acceptable" ten percent infection rate among the populations they supervise?

Ours is not a perfect system, or a perfect world, but it's better by far than what those who basically want porn to disappear would put in its place.

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Ernest, I think there is no need to explain to me that you struggle to find the best solution for performers which can be achieved under the current government you have to face. Thanks for pointing out again that you'd like to see condoms for penetration shots. Our discussion here basically circles around your opinion that this can't be enforced in a sensitive way with your current gov. It is not my aim to word something in a way it may be counterproductive to yours or AIM's efforts, since I have a feeling some of my ideas do, I think it is better for me to bow out of the discussion or take it to email. I answer your question though.

X-Ray

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What the gender breakdown?

How does that compare with the rate for the US?

How does that compare with the heterosexual, non-IV drug using, 18-25 population?

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X-Ray first:

"Okay, then we assume a producer carries a certain responsibility as employer that was neglected so we have personal injury by negligence. I'm just juggling words here, though I'd like to add it is still a mystery to me under which group of employees non contract American sex-performers get subsumed."

It's a mystery to everybody. No one has yet been able to determine definitively whether or not non-contract performers are employees or independent contractors. Until that matter is resolved, no employee regulations can be legally applied to non-contract players. The circumstances under which Cal-OHSA levied fines against a producer last spring are still unclear and will remain so until there is some kind of court test.

"From a legal point of view you might be right, though I think the example is slightly inappropriate.
I still believe they could hardly enforce it, as much as we sadly still have racial discrimination."

It would only take a single court case of this sort to put a producer out of business, which is yet another disincentive for producers to heed the wishes of performers who refuse to work with non-tested partners, should mandatory testing become formally illegal.

"Well, ACLU could start sues in the name of some rejected performer not showing up with a recent HIV-test and being flamed and fired right now too, so why gets the situation worse than it is now just because we have condoms?"

Not so. As performers are not currently regulated as employees, they have no standing to make employment discrimination claims. That is not a good thing in some respects, as I oppose many forms of discrimination that go on in this industry. However, discrimination against HIV+ players should be a clearly justifiable exception. Alas, California law doesn't agree. The minute Cal-OHSA were to take over regulation of safety procedures on sets, the statutes would apply. Lawyers for all sides, including those who favor mandatory condoms, agree this is true.

"If "all kinds of other behavioral changes" means no more internal shots rather then CAL-OHSA kind of changes then yes (and that's an emphatic yes). I consider an ELISA test + condoms safer than a PCRDNA and shooting creampies. Feel free to prove me wrong on this, since it is one of the most important points in this discussion.
Between the first localization of HIV with PCRDNA and the successful detection of antibodies lies "just" one week with the latest generation of ELISA. Given the fact that we still have talent with testing intervals of 3 weeks and more ELISA + CONDOMS suddenly? sound like a good idea. Also PCRDNA is not flawless either as it only detects a certain part of the virus genome. I would still prefer PCRDNA+condoms but I would not go as far as calling ELISA "totally useless", when coupled with mandatory condoms I consider it superior to what you have right now."

You'd be wrong on that, my friend. The window period of the ELISA is still a minimum of six weeks. All the infected performers last spring were still showing negaitve on the confirmatory ELISAs we ran a full month after the PCR-DNA test picked up their infections. For our purposes, the ELISA is indeed useless as a primary test instrument.

And as for condoms with ELISAs, the odds wouldn't improve that much. Condoms are a most effective protection for ordinary folks with relatively few, low-stress sexual encounters. However, having shot more condom footage than just about any director who posts here, I can tell you that the conditions under which porn scenes are shot make condoms much less reliable.

Frequent changes of position, much longer, and therefore much more friction-generating, contacts than are common in the outside world, frequent fluctuations in the erections of male performers using them and large numbers of condoms used in a typical scene all combine to reduce their effectiveness. An HIV+ performer with a valid ELISA test and a broken condom could easily cause a transmission.

One thing I've said all along in this discussion, and maintain to this minute, is that I would not under any circumstances knowingly hire an HIV+ player or expect any other performer to work with said player, condom or no. An uninfected partner is the only reliable protection against transmission. Yes, condoms work fine under normal circumstances, but porn isn't made under normal circumstances. Condoms plus PCR-DNA - great, I'm all for it. Condoms without PCR-DNA - no way.

Now then, let me also try to answer TonyC's questions (though I'm still wondering where all this is going):

What is the infection rate for the AIM talent pool (new infections:100,000/year)?

For seven of our eight years in operation, the HIV infection rate in the active talent pool was 2 positives in 80,000 tests. However, this number is misleading, as we weren't testing 80,000 different people. In fact, we believe we have tested about 6,000 performers since our inception, with a total of 7 positives, four of which were related to the single incident last spring. Technically, that would give us an infection rate of about .01 percent, but obviously, the immediate exclusion of performers testing positive makes even that number too high to be used as a constant.

What the gender breakdown?

Of the 7 positives over the past 8 years, 4 were male, one was transsexual and 3 were female.

How does that compare with the rate for the US?

At the end of 2004, the CDC estimates that the total number of people living in the USA with HIV/AIDS is thought to be between 1,039,000 and 1,185,000. Out of an estimated US population of nearly 300 million, that amounts to a bit less than .50 percent - roughly five times that of the porn talent pool's highest percentage spike.

How does that compare with the heterosexual, non-IV drug using, 18-25 population?

The CDC doesn't keep the statistics in exactly that form.
What they do tell us is that approx. 17 percent of all new HIV infections in the US last year were detected among people between the ages of 20 and 29.

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thanks for the info and merry christmas

dan

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Six weeks would indeed be too long of a time frame however newer ELISA tests try to reduce this time window further. The 4th generation tests used in Europe detect antibodies for HIV-1 and HIV-2 (and other non-Subtyp-B which are often NOT tested for when using pcr-dna or pcr-rna) as well as a p24-Anitgen* check all in a single test.

* The p24 test identifies actual HIV viral particles in blood (p24 is a protein found in HIV). However, the p24 test is generally only positive from about one week to 3 - 4 weeks after infection with HIV. High titers of p24 antigen are present in the serum of acutely infected individuals during the short period between infection and seroconversion. Some people can experience symptoms of seroconversion as soon as a few days after becoming infected with HIV, but, on average, it happens from 2 to 4 weeks after infection.
For comparison, a PCR-DNA will most likely become positive by 2-4 weeks after exposure (However thanks to it's high sensitivity a PCR-DNA test can become positive after as little as 72 hours).

Most researchers consider the PCR-DNA tests superior in detecting very low concentrations of the hiv virus load. In other words a p24 check might fail while a PCR-DNA test still gets a positive result. An old standard ELISA (not combined with p24) test searching for antibodies only is usually positive within 4-12 weeks after exposure/infection.

However there is another problem with the PCR-DNA only approach. During acute infection (initial) viral replication is often extremely elevated. This happens because the virus is initially targeting cells and killing what it can before the body can mount a "solid" *cough* immune response. After the body produces antibodies to HIV, the HIV titers in the body diminish greatly, often to a state of undetectability , although HIV continues to actively and gradually destroy the immune system.

It is because of this reason, that an undetectable PCR test after few months (like a performer taking a two month recovery break), although in the majority of the cases reliably shows infection or non-infection, throws in a little gray zone question mark. In radical contrast, at two months or more, you can take an ELISA test which looks for antibodies to the virus. A result after two (some say three) or more months will be reliably conclusive. Note that a performer using 4th generation p24-ELISA in a monthly testing cycle could in case of a HIV-1 infection test positive in as little as 1-4 weeks thanks to the p24 antigen detection. Naturally after 4 weeks there is already a good chance to detect antibodies thanks to the high sensitivity of ELISA (remember it's basically two tests in one). The estimated average time between the p24 detection and the development of HIV antibodies is approximately 7 days.

However, for some people the p24 test is faulty and gives a false positive although they never had any contact with the hiv virus (this should get catched with the initial screening/first test), these people should then use another test like western-blog and standard ELISA for verification and switch to PCR-DNA tests for the rest of their career (which should be the prefered test anyway ).

I'm sorry, but once again, a 4th generation ELISA and mandatory condoms for penetration offer a much higher protection than going bareback and relying on PCR tests. If you are in doubt, ask a doctor you trust for confirmation. The best protection you could get would be PCR-DNA in two week intervals and an ELISA at least every two month and, of course, condoms.

Now on to the condom question everything is centered around. Even if you'd use up to ten condoms in a single scene it doesn't show up on the production costs at all. To suggest the possibility of condoms failing due to rough sex challenging their tremendous benefits protecting against all kinds of STDs on a set in order to uphold current state (and that is AIM providing cheap PCR-DNA and performers using NO NO NO condoms, since you Ernest are the sole exception in gonzo giving performers a choice) doesn't serve any good cause.

To talk to producers and suggest them to allow gonzo performers to choose condoms voluntary is unrealistic.
To talk to producers and suggest to voluntary ban internal ejaculations also failed.

To introduce mandatory condoms and protect performers while at the same time allowing them to choose a HIV-test of their choice instead (AIM vs. gov agency providing ELISA) is much more realistic. I believe most performers could pay higher testing costs for PCR-DNA from petty cash and would welcome the option to use condoms.

Your argument of CAL-OSHA prohibiting HIV-test checks for employment to become a lawful standard has more weight, imho. I already addressed this topic, but I admit the outcome in court would be uncertain at best. However there it is again, a government that establishes an agency that offers ELISA testing and allows CAL-OSHA at the same time to invent a standard that prohibits producers to see those tests is a paradox.

FYI, I'd also like to add that you can get work with an ELISA shooting no condom porn all over Europe. I thought I mention it before people start pointing fingers. I think AIM offering PCR-DNA for the masses does a great job in comparison.

-

One more point since today it's all med stuff anyway. Anyone telling performers HIV is no big deal anymore is a liar or illusionist. Sure HIV-PEP's of today help a great deal to keep HIV in check. But it comes at a price.
Did you know Anti-HIV drugs are mostly protease inhibitors and have unpleasant side effects, affecting how your body metabolises fat? Patients can develop very drawn faces or significant swelling around their abdomens and you have to take HIV drugs 95 to 100% of the time because the virus is very unforgiving. Everything horror aside you will most definitely become weight problems as your metabolism gets screwed, even if you do not develop AIDS at the fast pace it used to overtake your body in the 80ies. Those Antibiotics (A2P!) and Anti HIV meds of today are a safety net, not a substitute for common sense!

I think every performer who sees a chance to fight for mandatory condoms should do so.
Be it as a contract girl, on request, or together with other talent in a union or something.

X-Ray

Edited by - X-RAY on 12/25/2005 4:20:14 PM

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A most impressive display of medical erudition. And much appreciated, especially for reminding anyone who may have forgotten that, even with better treatments available now, HIV is still a dreadful condition to live with.

FYI, we do use both the ELISA and p24 tests for confirmatory purposes when we turn up a positive PCR-DNA. Given that the ELISA, however slow to respond, is highly definitive, I would support its use as a back-up to the PCR-DNA test on an occasional basis, although false negatives from the latter are still extremely rare.

And even gen 4 ELISAs still have much longer window periods than the PCR-DNA. It takes the body a certain amount of time to produce detectable HIV antibodies, and making the ELISA more sensitive can only cut the window period down by a fairly small percentage. Until the antibodies are present in substantial concentrations, it has nothing to detect. Since different people sero-convert at different rates, the effectiveness of the ELISA is spotty under the best of circumstances.
The p24, as you say, is only temporarily indicative in the early phases of infection. It's basically a quantitative test used in conjunction with the Western Blot, which are all after the fact of a detected infection.

And it's not correct that the PCR-DNA test loses effectiveness after viral loads drop and before antibodies appear. It is, as you say, highly sensitive and will pick up HIV proteins in the blood, even in extremely low concentrations. You might want to ask a doctor about that part.

"The best protection you could get would be PCR-DNA in two week intervals and an ELISA at least every two month and, of course, condoms. "

I agree with you on this 100%. I don't care to see it made a matter of law and mangled by hostile bureaucrats for reasons re-stated ad nauseum, but I don't dispute the basic contention in any way. I would like to see all these things come about, voluntarily.

"Now on to the condom question everything is centered around. Even if you'd use up to ten condoms in a single scene it doesn't show up on the production costs at all. To suggest the possibility of condoms failing due to rough sex challenging their tremendous benefits protecting against all kinds of STDs on a set in order to uphold current state (and that is AIM providing cheap PCR-DNA and performers using NO NO NO condoms, since you Ernest are the sole exception in gonzo giving performers a choice) doesn't serve any good cause."

Obviously, the cost of condoms is the lest of my concerns here, but I think it serves an extremely good cause to point out that condoms without testing would create the same false sense of security you dislike about the current regime. Much as I despise the anti-scientific campaign of the Bush administration to undercut public confidence in condom use for STD protection, it is a readily observable fact that condoms in porn are less effective than when used under other circumstances. Taken alone, without reliable testing, they would less adequate than the system we have now.

Morever, since you raise the question of STDs other than HIV, condoms are also ineffective against Chlamydia, herpes, HPV and all strains of Hepatitis. They are no magic bullet. They work best at preventing the most serious STDs: HIV, Syphilis and gonohorea, but it's just as wrong to overstate their benefits as to understate them.

Condoms do fail on sets far more often than they do under non-working conditions. I've seen it happen many, many times. Thankfully, nothing bad has resulted from these episodes, but that is because of testing and luck. I've seen condoms break, slip off during penetration, roll up due to improper application and lose their ability to seal tightly becuase of a fluctuating hardon. From personal observation, I would say their failure rate on porn sets nears 15 pecent. Without good testing, that would be a dangerously high number indeed.

And in all fairness, I don't shoot gonzo and some producers who do will accept condoms at the performer's request. Let's give a bit of credit in the few places it's due.

"To talk to producers and suggest them to allow gonzo performers to choose condoms voluntary is unrealistic.
To talk to producers and suggest to voluntary ban internal ejaculations also failed."

I'm not convinced of either of these contentions. There is a process of education going on and I am more optimistic than you about its eventual effectiveness. When I first began my personal efforts to make porn sex safer, a doctor friend from WHO told me it might take longer than I would like, but that I would see the changes I wanted ultimately. It's taken ten years since then to get as far as we have, but believe me, it's a long way from where we were back then. Public health progress requires some patience. Quick fixes such as ill-conceived and counter-productive government intervention often produce setbacks instead of progress.

"To introduce mandatory condoms and protect performers while at the same time allowing them to choose a HIV-test of their choice instead (AIM vs. gov agency providing ELISA) is much more realistic. I believe most performers could pay higher testing costs for PCR-DNA from petty cash and would welcome the option to use condoms."

I would tend to agree if those were the choices being offered. However, as I've already pointed out, the options on the table are much less reasonable. If PCR-DNA and other tests can't be required by law, the whole business of their voluntary use opens new avenues of creative litigation that would tend to discourage open exchange of information by private parties. For instance, right now any producer can call AIM and get confirmaton of the accuracy of test documents presented by performers on sets. Under all the proposed mandatory regulation schemes, this would be impossible, as HIV (I know this is unbelievable, but it's the law) is not a reportable condition under California statutes.

I think every performer who feels anything other than totally confident of his or her partner should demand condoms, starting right now, and refuse to work for producers who won't allow their use. Performers have no political standing to influence government agencies, but they do have the ability to influence producers. All they have to do is use it.

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Why thank you. I'll pass along the compliment.

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The P24-Antigentest is integral part of a 4th gen ELISA, while a "full" Westernblot tests about ten different proteins. Just as said it can be used as an "indicative" to do further tests. The purpose it was included with 4gen ELISAs is to shorten the diagnostic gap.
Let's say our patient is one of the kind able to use p24 antigens tests (not one of the few who always shows up positive). And one day the patient shows up positive for p24 antigen the first time in a history of two years regular testing with 4th gen ELISA. This would indicate a problem, you would do a full western-blot and a pcr-dna immediately. Once a again I'd always recommend PCR-DNA as primary test over testing with a 4th gen ELISA alone, however calling ELISA "totally useless" isn't exactly a good idea.

"And it's not correct that the PCR-DNA test loses effectiveness after viral loads drop and before antibodies appear. It is, as you say, highly sensitive and will pick up HIV proteins in the blood, even in extremely low concentrations. You might want to ask a doctor about that part."

I said after the body produces antibodies to HIV, the HIV titers in the body diminish greatly, often to a state of undetectability. Why is this important?

I give you an example, Susy Suicide decides to do an vaginal creampie as it is her last shot before the three month holiday break and it feels so good.
After four weeks Susy feels a lil sick, she is having fever, but it's gone the day after. After three months well-rested Susy gets back in action, starting like always with a fresh PCR-DNA test at AIM. Negative. Great. What Susy does not know is her immune system was very active last weeks building anti bodies and fighting down HIV to a level below what can be picked up by the sensitivty of a PCR-DNA test. Had she done an ELISA... she would have known by now, because these antibodies are currently in her blood.

To draw a pathway in retrospective, had Susy kept testing with PCR-DNA (she did not because of her holiday) she would have tested positive on day three (temporary peek), week two (low viral load), on week four (peek), on week eight (medium), and only just on week ten (very low, body is fighting back full force) on week twelve the viral load is temporary below detection treshold of the otherwise high sensitive PCR-DNA test. This is just an exemplary fictional progress for educational purpose.

Remember we are talking about young people at the peak of their health. There is a chance for a good immune system to fight hiv down temporarily. It can not be ruled out, but I will do what you say and try to get a specialized expert on this issues rather than just some drunken horny doc on holiday.

"I would like to see all these things come about, voluntarily."
Believe me, me too, however... all I expect from most producers is a "life is great!" for next year

"Moroever, since you raise the question of STDs other than HIV, condoms are also ineffective against Chlamydia, herpes, HPV and all strains of Hepatitis. They are no magic bullet. They work best at preventing the most serious STDs: HIV, Syphilis and gonohorea, but it's just as wrong to overstate their benefits as to understate them."

I don't think I did. As you said they work best at preventing the most serious STDs, do we really need to say more? I never questioned we need both testing and condoms. We should all think about how to reach this goal giving up neither.

"Condoms do fail on sets far more often than they do under non-working conditions. [...]
I would say their failure rate on porn sets nears 15 percent. Without good testing, that would be a dangerously high number indeed."

Yes, however mandatory condoms would not go hand in hand with no testing. I firmly believe performers would keep up voluntary testing in their own interest. The real problem would be CAL-OSHA trying to forbid HIV testing as employment check and the likely (not necessarily) resulting litigation as well as the missing opportunity to verify tests calling AIM. (BTW, are faked AIM test results a problem over there?)

Ernest, you know the legal system in America, I don't, so what I want now is just for a moment forget about the competition between a legal agency and AIM, also assume talent would be responsible enough to keep voluntary pcr-dna testing alive for their own good, now... can you think of a lawful introduction of condoms without changing the strange legal status of porn performers?

If not, which organization or lobby would be the right amicus to call CAL-OSHA out on their ill-fated mandate to protect sex performers privacy on HIV results and to change these Californian statutes, that prohibit to report the health condition of a porn performer to a producer, PRIOR to inventing mandatory condoms?

"And in all fairness, I don't shoot gonzo and some producers who do will accept condoms at the performer's request. Let's give a bit of credit in the few places it's due."

Well, first, as you might guess I'm not that big of a porn watcher as a matter of fact I did not see a single one of your movies . So sorry, I really was under the impression you do gonzo stuff (which I, BTW, would have absolutely no negative feelings towards). Oh and I gave you credit! as one of the few giving every performer a choice, and Evil Angel for baning creampies. I also highlighted Vivid and Wicked as an example of companies who established a voluntary safer sex rule set financially successful.

I think every performer who feels anything other than totally confident of his or her partner should demand condoms, starting right now, and refuse to work for producers who won't allow their use. Performers have no political standing to influence government agencies, but they do have the ability to influence producers. All they have to do is use it.

finally something I can really rally behind.

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Yet another impressive post, though I feel we're arguing more and more arcane points of law and medicine for which, frankly, neither of us might be well enough informed. As always, you make many good points and we still want the same things. There just seem to remain a couple of areas where reality confounds us both:

First of all, sorry I didn't do a better job of explaining how the confirmatory tests work as a system. My bad. You're correct to point out that the p24 is part of the gen 4 panel.

However, you're not correct about this part, at least from our experience:

"I said after the body produces antibodies to HIV, the HIV titers in the body diminish greatly, often to a state of undetectability. Why is this important?"

It's important because it suggests that the PCR-DNA loses effectiveness with duration of infection. That hasn't been our experience. With patients we know to be HIV+ and on PI cocktails, and therefore with very low viral loads, we have still never gotten a negative PCR-DNA result on a patient already known to be positive. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but the PCR-DNA is extremely sensitive to HIV proteins and the example you give is therefore needlessly alarmist. I'm quite sure Suzy Suicide would test positive with our standard protocols under the circumstances you describe.

"Yes, however mandatory condoms would not go hand in hand with no testing. I firmly believe performers would keep up voluntary testing in their own interest. The real problem would be CAL-OSHA trying to forbid HIV testing as employment check and the likely (not necessarily) resulting litigation as well as the missing opportunity to verify tests calling AIM. (BTW, are faked AIM test results a problem over there?)"

Here we come to our big sticking point. While I agree the vast majority of performers would, at least at first, continue to test on their own, the legal problems involved would greatly reduce the usefulness of their doing so.

When you suggest that litigation wouldn't necessarily occur to prevent performers and producers from agreeing to testing as a condition of hiring, you express an understandable disbelief at the stupidity of the present laws. It wouldn't be a matter of litigation but rather of existing law. A performer denied hiring on the basis of testing needn't go to court, but only to report to the state authorities that he or she was unhired over a test. This would trigger an automatic investigation, almost certainly resulting in administrative penalities imposed without a court hearing of any kind.

While I would like to think that no performer would do such a thing, the experiences of last spring showed us some very deep divisions and some bitter hostilities, personal and professional, in our industry. This very likely scenario could easily result from a single angry performer, possibly encouraged by producers who have their own competitive interests at heart, unleashing the vast bureaucracy of the state's anti-discrimination mechanisms on all the other parties involved. Unfortunately, there is much precedent for this in other industries where HIV discrimination issues have been raised. The unique circumstances of porn wouldn't inspire much sympathy from state regulators, as we've already discussed.

And yes, there have been problems with performers and/or agents attempting to alter or fake test results. It's infrequent, and usually just a matter of trying to "fix" the date by a few days because somebody was too busy or too lazy to get in for his or her test on time, but the ability of producers to verify the authenticity of tests by phone or lab-dat is a vital part of the service AIM provides that would definitely be put at risk by any condition-of-employment allegation. Though performers sign releases when they test that allow us to give out this information to producers, should a producer demonstrably use our information as justification for refusal to hire, the discrimination issue would definitely be raised.

"Ernest, you know the legal system in America, I don't, so what I want now is just for a moment forget about the competition between a legal agency and AIM, also assume talent would be responsible enough to keep voluntary pcr-dna testing alive for their own good, now... can you think of a lawful introduction of condoms without changing the strange legal status of porn performers?

If not, which organization or lobby would be the right amicus to call CAL-OSHA out on their ill-fated mandate to protect sex performers privacy on HIV results and to change these Californian statutes, that prohibit to report the health condition of a porn performer to a producer, PRIOR to inventing mandatory condoms?"

This is a truly tough question. If I grant your first two propositions - and I don't, quite frankly - the only way to mandate condom use legally would still be to class all performers as employees, not contractors, even if they work for a producer only one time. This would give Cal-OHSA full jurisdiction over working conditions and the right to impose whatever regulations - reasonable or not - they choose. Most performers as well as most producers would find this state bureaucracy's idea of regulation unworkable. I wasn't making up that stuff about face masks and gloves. That was what they were proposing last spring.

I think you've got it back to front. Until there is some exception written into the law that vacates the prohibition against mandatory testing, it's reckless to even consider, much less accept, the authority of the state over production practices at all. We simply cannot allow ourselves to be put on the defensive by accepting legal rules that ban mandatory testing and then try to get those rules changed after the fact. It's very difficult to do that once authority has been established under our legal system. And I know that's true where you are too. Government agencies rarely surrender powers once acquired.

And the second part of your question is even trickier. We don't have a union. The Free Speech Coalition mainly represents the interests of producers and would make an unattractive plaintiff in such litigation. AIM, as we've already discussed, can't engage in lobbying or legal proceedings without endangering its own status as a tax-free healthcare provider. Bottom line - it would come down to individual producers and/or performers to challenge the anti-discrimination statutes in order to secure an exception for porn. I find it hard to imagine any judge granting such an exception based on the pleadings of a few individuals who have clear financial interests in the outcome.

Meantime, I take no personal offense because you haven't seen my pictures. Unless you like BDSM stuff, which is the only other thing I do regularly, my instructional shows with my wife Nina seem rather too basic for someone who can discuss the things we have on this thread with such sophistication. It doesn't sound to me like you're in need of our particular products, which are primarily intended for relatively inexperienced couples looking to try new sex practices at home.

As we come to the end, you and I once again agree on goals and differ only on methods. Please believe me when I say I've been trying for a decade to get from where we are to where I think we should be, but I haven't figured out how to do it. If this were purely a medical problem, or for that matter an economic problem, I think it would be solved by now.

Unfortunately, it's also a legal and political problem, and in this country when you mix law, politics and sex, the results almost invariably end up making things worse for sex workers. Nothing short of a change in consciousness regarding sex-work that affords it full equality and protection under the same laws as other forms of legitmate labor will we both get what we want, and we're quite far from that now. Neither AIM nor the state legislature nor any state agency, much less either of us, has a magic wand to wave over this very complex situation and resolve it in one pass.

When porn is fully legalized and porn performers and producers are accepted as in any other legitmate enterprise, I would have much less concern about state intervention. For as long as regulation is really just a cover for attempts to ban porn outright, I'll continue to defend the existing system as preferable to the chaos that any attempt to replace it would produce.

Let's keep in mind one good thing. Tragic as last spring's transmissions were, they were also the first since AIM started testing. I don't deny that the possibility of a repetition exists. Over time, I don't doubt that a virus present in signficant quantities in the population at large will slip into our community again at some time in the future. However, we're still doing a better job than any other HIV prevention program in our part of the world and I have faith that we will continue to offer the best alternative that can realistically be made available in what remains a very difficult political climate.

I'm not suggesting that no alternatives are feasible. Our society simply refuses to consider them, and that is a failing beyond the reach of anyone in our small, politically vulnerable community. I'd rather keep the risks we have now than create new ones in the huge mess that would arise out of a clumsy attempt to convert from a voluntary, community-based program that enjoys wide support and confidence to a state-operated system in which no sex-worker had a voice.

Like them or not - and I don't like them - those are the choices we face.

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As the 30-day regime is a harm-reduction strategy, I'm not sure what the point of comparing the prevalence of HIV is; but in any case, comparing the HIV rate in porn to an HIV rate that is heavily skewed by the behavior pathologically promiscuous gay men, junkies, and women who can't, won't, or don't protect themselves doesn't strike me as particularly enlightening.

Earlier in the thread consciousness raising was mentioned, and for the conscientious porn producer, performer, or viewer, there are really only two meaningful statistic related to HIV in porn :

1) At what rate does rogue behavior of male talent result in their acquiring HIV? (Threat level)

2) At what rate does on-set male to female transmission of HIV occur? (Screening effectiveness)

(Only the most PC-blinded fool wouldn't acknowledge that the only vectors of transmission of any real concern in straight porn are rogue behavior by male talent, i.e. IV drugs, unprotected and/or screened sexual activity; and male to female on-set transmission.)

Clearly there are some viewers who while demand risky acts, and no efforts at "consciousness raising" will have an effect on them. Indeed, the only difference between their pathology and the pathology of a pedophile is that the images that feed their sickness are legal.

But I have to hope that no matter how vocal these so-called "fans" are, they represent a small minority of the market; and that the overwhelming majority of porn enthusiasts are like Scipio, who earlier in this thread professed that a more developed understanding for the health risks of ATP has de-sexualized the act and drained it of erotic appeal.

Rates of HIV incursion and transmission are easily developed. Properly documented and widely disseminated, they would give producers, performers, and viewers a basis of comparison to other relevant HIV infection rate data. Scipio and others like him would then be able to make an informed decision as to whether the pleasure or profit they enjoy from porn justifies the risk.

Edited by - TonyC on 12/27/2005 12:17:48 PM

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Basically, I agree with every word you say here. This is a demand-driven business and for as long as consumers line up to buy videos that boast of being "100% condom-free!" or "An all cream-pie extravaganza!"we're not going to have much luck getting producers to change their ways.

Let me say again that, granting mine is not a gonzo audience, condoms haven't hurt sales of my pictures in any way. I prefer to think that their gradual introduction has already begun and that as time goes by, we'll see more safer sex and the industry will remain plenty profitable.

As a cautionary counter-example, however, Video Team, which has a different market, pretty much lost its ass on an all-condom policy over a four year period, so obviously some consumers will resist more stubbornly then others.

As to your risk assessment questions, they're certainly valid and important, but the answers don't necessarily support the level of alarm some people clearly feel with regard to HIV transmissions on porn sets.

While it is certainly true that some men in porn do engage in high-risk behavior in their personal lives that endangers their onscreen partners, and it is also true that transmissions of the virus have happened on porn sets, as we know, the incidence remains, to me at least, surprisingly low.

Bottom line is that we've had four such transmissions in the entire history of AIM testing despite literally tens of thousands of non-condom sex acts among our client base over the past eight years.

Los Angeles County overall had 1400+ new transmissions last year alone, according to the LADOHS' own statistics. I see what you're driving at a bit about the difference in the size of the populations monitored, and that even one transmission in porn represents a much bigger spike than it would in the outside world, but I don't think you can deny that HIV infections spread by porn are still extremely rare. I also think you're drawing some unsupported conclusions based on the data available regarding the demographics of cases that arise outside the porn community:

"comparing the HIV rate in porn to an HIV rate that is heavily skewed by the behavior pathologically promiscuous gay men, junkies, and women who can't, won't, or don't protect themselves doesn't strike me as particularly enlightening."

While I don't doubt that the groups you describe here contribute disproportionately to the infection pool, I think it's dangerous to suggest that those you describe above skew overall infection data to the point of meaninglessness. Even if you eliminated everyone who met those criteria from the total number of new infections in the "civilian" community, you would still find greatly higher new infection rates among unscreened civilians than among tested porn performers. However inconvenient, this remains a statistical fact.

The kinds of anomalous situations that produced last spring's cases in porn are still far more widespread even among comparatively low-risk groups in the outside world. Indeed, one of the greater problems faced in communities where HIV isn't discussed openly as it is here is ignorance regarding what constitutes risk and thus the high number of carriers who have no clue that anything they've done might have put them at risk.

One doesn't have to be pathologically promiscuous or a junkie to have a careless, drunken moment on a business trip and bring HIV home to a spouse who has no reason to suspect that such a thing could happen. The alarming rise of HIV incidence among married women - currently the fastest growing group of HIV+ patients - would suggest such scenarios are anything but far-fetched.

For as long as we have continuous testing, while nobody at AIM or anywhere else can or would promise they won't occur again, I expect transmissions in porn to remain, thankfully, highly uncommon. Simply dropping a few needlessly risky practices, like internal pops, would make them even less common.

While the use of condoms in every scene wouldn't necessarily drop the risk to zero, for reasons i've already explained, it would certainly minimize the risk to the greatest degree possible, and I favor doing exactly that.

However, honesty requires us to face the fact that the vast majority of non-condom contacts in porn among tested performers are relatively low risk. If it were otherwise, we would have seen a great many more infections by now. That's why we feel the confidence we do in the harm reduction model. While not perfect, it has clearly proved highly effective.

If performers, producers and consumers are willing to accept those fairly long odds - which I don't think they should be - I would posit two results:

1. The vast majority of non-condom porn will not result in greater numbers of HIV transmissions than those we've seen.

2. However rarely, there will be other transmissions in porn.

Harm reduction is not harm elimination. While the latter might never be a completely attainable goal, I think we should continue to strive toward it.

Where we agree most strongly is that no piece of video is worth anyone's life, and that producers, performers and consumers need to get that fact through their heads.

Edited by - ernestgreene on 12/27/2005 2:10:59 PM

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As far as statistical facts, here are some facts from the CDC.

According to the "2004 Surveillance Report", in 2004 there were 38,730 new HIV infections. Of these, 25,537 are attributed to male to male sexual contact and/or IV drug use.

Another 8,102 are male to female tranmissions, in which the CDC cites in inablity of many at risk women to recognize their sexual partners risk status (i.e. her partner was having sex with men or shooting drugs) and/or an inablity to respond appropriately (i.e. she didn't feel she could insist on him usinng a condom) as the number one factor leading to these infections.

But for the sake of arguement, lets allow all of these 8,102 infections to stand, making the total of non IV drug, non male to male sexual contact infections in 2004 13,193

Let's also place the straight, non-IV drug using, sexually active population at 150,000,000.

That puts the HIV infection rate in 2004 in this population at 8.8:100,000/year.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:

Over the last eight years, what is the average annual rate of HIV infection in the male talent pool, expressed as infections:100,000/year?

Over the last eight years, what is the average annual rate of on-set female infection, expressed as infections:100,000,/year?

Without this data, and without comparing it to annual infection rates in other relevent populations, I don't see how you or anyone else can make any sort of statement that HIV in porn is "extremely rare".

Edited by - TonyC on 12/27/2005 2:11:06 PM

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As already stated, we've found 3 infected male players in the past 8 years. In our population, that would make less than .50 cases per year. For women, exactly the same - 3 infections in 8 years - also less than .50 per year. This omits the one infected transsexual we tested.

You can certainly use a different set of basline numbers to produce a more alarming statistical result, based on the comparatively small population of X-rated performers vis a vis the population at large, but the absolute number of infections in porn remains very low, especially viewed in light of the number of contacts involved.

None of this invalidates your basic argument that testing is not a substitue for condoms. I'm not sure why you're pushing so hard on this point.

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3 infections/~625 female*/8 year = ~60/100:000/year.

Does that look about right?

*Average talent pool achieved using 80,000 tests administered monthly for 8 years.

Edited by - TonyC on 12/27/2005 2:25:03 PM

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But with that established, I guess I'm just curious if there are any practical and immediate ways to reduce the flaws in the current system?

Before reading Ernest's posts on this thread, I held the uninformed opinion that it'd be better for porn performers to work as employees, rather than independent contractors. I thought that employee status would grant some much needed workplace protections. But if I understand Ernest correctly, the opposite is true. Let's see if I've got this right: employers are prohibited from requiring HIV test results of their employees. The intention is to prevent discriminatory hiring practices against HIV+ individuals. In most cases, that would be a good thing. But if porn stars are classified as employees, then the whole testing regime could fall to pieces the first time any disgruntled performer complains that his or her HIV status was requested.

Which wouldn't be a problem if condoms were strictly required, except that condoms are apparently far less reliable on porn sets than in more mundane circumstances. According to Ernest, there's a failure rate as high as 15% due to greater wear-and-tear, fluctuating erections, etc. I had no idea. If the failure rate is that high, and if HIV status reporting ceased under state law, that'd almost certainly be a recipe for another outbreak. In light of that information, I've come to a new conclusion that performers are genuinely safer with less government oversight, at least under the current circumstances.

All this also makes me wonder how many transmissions have occurred in the gay segment of the industry, where condoms are usually required but testing is not. I bet a lot more than people are commonly aware of. That's quite worrisome to me, as a consumer of gay porn.

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