In 2002 AIM had operating expenses of slightly less than $800,000. All but $24,000 of that was covered by operating income from testing fees and other services that AIM provides. In other words, over 95% of AIM's income came from performers. Production companies donated most of the money needed to cover the operating deficit. AIM runs a small but constant deficit, and production company donations tend to be enough to cover the deficit. This is from memory. Ernest will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure. :)

Taking the HIV test twice as often doesn't give you twice the protection. There's a period of several days after the initial infection during which there isn't enough virus in the blood to be detectable. After than, the test's sensitivity rises from 0% to 95% at twenty eight days. If you test twice a month, there's an increased chance that the first test after an infection will fail to detect the virus.

Probably the single most important factor in preventing infections is performer knowledge. The more performers understand infection and testing, the more likely they are to avoid infection. But you put a nineteen year old in front of the TV and make them watch Porn 101, and they probably don't absorb a third of it, forget another third after a few weeks, and don't always understand all of the third that they remember. Ongoing education is important, but it's one thing to set up meetings and another to get people to come. There's always competition for people's time. With the constant turnover in performers, AIM has a constant struggle to keep performer knowledge up to the point that they can protect themselves. It takes time to absorb information and understand it well enough to use it. In any form of education, the hardest part is to minimize the time lag between the first time someone is presented with information and the moment when they finally get it.

Perhaps the best way agents and producers and experienced performers can help prevent new outbreaks is to encourage new performers to take advantage of informational meetings. Some of the rumors going around suggest that performers who don't understand the risks they're taking are a bigger threat than not testing for enough STDs or not taking tests often enough.

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Now imagine the same performer on a fortnightly testing regime. Again, he is infected 13 days before his test, and gets a false negative. He will test positive on the following test, 14 days later. He will have spent a total of 27 days working while infected.

44-27 = 17 days that he will NOT work while infected. Presumably these are also 17 days where his viral load is much higher and his chances of passing on infection would have been greater.

I have no medical qualifications, but from simple logic alone, this seems to be a valuable increase in safety. How many other performers might have been infected in those missing seventeen days?

Edited for typos.

Edited by - licker on 10/18/2004 1:38:24 AM

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Besides I agree with Zartyr's position that there should be some form of Union/Association and imho they shouldn't shy away from working together with legal departments to drive those who jeopardize other people's lives out of business.
I already pointed out in an earlier post that such an association could be of use to push back OSHA too.
LA based companies should begin negotiations about such a thing immediately.

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Internet porn is a whole other problem, since most is not made in LA and uses people with whom the production community has no direct contact. We're a long way from having any standards in place for that market.

Public denunciations of this or that producer or performer are tediously commonplace throughout the industry, including in this forum. They seem thus far to have been completely ineffectual. The whole approach of attempting to shame or scare producers into changing the way they make their pictures has failed again and again. And before you can even go there, legal sanctions won't stop them either. The unethical producers will find a way around any obstacle you put in their way. Only determination and guts on the part of performers will protect them from the predators this business has always attracted and always will. One more time, this problem cannot be legislated away.

I didn't like Zartyr's tone much - opinions have something in common with excuses and assholes, everybody's got one - but I agree that an industry-wide organization with policy-making power is a highly desirable approach. Producers will still violate the policies, but at least there will be some organization capable of setting and maintaining them.

Again, getting a majority of producers to participate will be a daunting challenge. The last time most of the producers were assembled in one room to discuss safety issues (1998), fist-fights broke out in the crowd. These guys don't necessarily like or trust each other, and getting them to act in their own common interest is an uphill fight against a prevailing every-company-for-itself culture. A worthy effort, to be sure, but lengthy and with no guarantee of success.

Nonetheless, AIM will vigorously support any attempt to get either producers or performers to organize effectively in the creation of safer working conditions.

Edited by - ernestgreene2000 on 10/18/2004 4:34:19 PM

Edited by - ernestgreene2000 on 10/18/2004 4:35:53 PM

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and on some other thread someone suggested a list of the tests now required, the types of tests used, and how to interpet those test relults.

Also, what is AIM's recommendation to the industry regarding hep c?

There seems to be alot of misunderstanding among the industry as to what AIM's role really is?

Is AIM a healthcare clinic or an entity that exists to facilitate the production of porn?

Perhaps on open letter to the industry detailing aims recommendations would be helpful.

And i've seen alot of things written to the effect of the "mandatory monthly testing" then I see other things that refer to the voluntary nature of the testing program. Is this a voluntary program or is their some legal requirement for testing?

As you can see i'm quite confused. But thank-you for replying to my other posts and i lood forward to having many more meaningful exchanges with you.

Again, i think the open letter to the industry would be quite helpful. Keep up the good work. All it take for evil to truimph is for good people to do nothing.

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You stated a fact:
However, because there is no internal regulatory body in porn such as the MPAA in mainstream film, it would be very difficult

Therefore my reply was not an attack against you (I labelled it als with "no offense intended").

I do not want to hear this shoulder-patting, the talk of the poor and haunted porn-community, and so on ever again.
I mean, do you think your fans, i.e. the porn biz' customers, are idiots with an IQ of 2 degrees over room temperature.

There were numerous incidents in the last years, or even decades (remember the MacKinnon/Dworkin-crusade?) which could have been an incentive to act accordingly.

The Adult Industry has had enough time to prepare itself (and to acknowledge, the AI isn't a backyard business which can be "hidden" from society's focus anymore), so it should act like a business of adults or rather grown ups.

You stated the fact, that the AI as a whole is not well prepared on this issue; and I am upset about the (in)action of the AI, so far.

Especially if one reads (not from you) that the AI is all so poor and harassed by governement, politics, public offices, etc., and could not do a thing and the AI of course is such a special business which cannot follow the 101 of business guidelines.

Well, I am quite tired of this and I do not think that sugarcoating works well in such an affair.
And I also do not think that excuses are a good tool to prevent failure, misfortune, and so on.

All these special issues in the porn industry (competition between companies, etc.) also applies for every other industry, but miraculously these industries get their industry-wide lobbying done.

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Again, thanks for the support. I'll try to address your questions one at a time:

"does aim have some place to get a list or 'position paper' of what their 'recommendations' are for the industry."

We're working on a new set of guidelines we will post on our Web site, http://www.aim-med.org/ , as soon as it's completely updated.

"and on some other thread someone suggested a list of the tests now required, the types of tests used, and how to interpet those test relults."

This part is already up.

Also, what is AIM's recommendation to the industry regarding hep c?

Again, we will be amplifying on this topic in the new guidelines, but it's a medically complex matter, subject to some interpretation, which is one of the reasons we haven't taken a public position on the case that's been discussed here recently. Since it's possible to test positive for Hep C expsosure without having an active or infectious case, and sexual transmission of Hep C is extremely rare, we may end up having to handle each situation case-by-case, relying on the judgments of the parties involved. More to come on this.

There seems to be alot of misunderstanding among the industry as to what AIM's role really is?

Is AIM a healthcare clinic or an entity that exists to facilitate the production of porn?

Both. Again, check the site. STD testing for the industry is our primary function, but we provide a wide range of other health services, including treatment and counseling, to people in the industry.

Perhaps on open letter to the industry detailing aims recommendations would be helpful.

Just as soon as we can.

And i've seen alot of things written to the effect of the "mandatory monthly testing" then I see other things that refer to the voluntary nature of the testing program. Is this a voluntary program or is their some legal requirement for testing?

At this point, testing is entirely voluntary, and we want it to stay that way, as California law requires. However, there is unanimous agreement among performers and producers not to employ talent without a 30-day current test report. It's informal, but it's stuck for seven years.

Zartyr,

Your points are well-taken, and I agree with you regarding what needs to be done. In fact, I share your annoyance at the slow response to what should have been an obvious necessity.

However, having worked in many other industries, I really have found that porn is a peculiar sort of business that doesn't really track like other enterprises. I do what I can to push it in the right direction, but there are many economic and human factors that make the process difficult.

This is not an excuse for anybody or anything. This is a realistic assessment of the work that needs to be done and the obstacles that must be overcome to get it done.

We've still got a long way to go, and I share what I take to be your view that we may be running out of time.

No offense intended or taken on either side, I trust.

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