Health Officials Backtrack on Number of HIV Cases in Porn Industry
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
LOS ANGELES — County public health officials backtracked on the number of previously unpublicized HIV cases in adult film performers Tuesday, saying they don’t know if those who tested positive were actively working in the industry at the time.
Last week county officials told The Los Angeles Times that there were at least 16 cases of HIV in adult film performers reported to them since 2004. The disclosure came after news that a female porn performer recently tested HIV positive.
On Tuesday, the department told the Times it does not know if any of the people who tested positive were actively performing in the adult film industry.
Officials also corrected the number of new cases adjusting the figure upward from 16 to 18.
The Adult Industry Medical Foundation, the San Fernando Valley clinic that serves the porn industry, said none of the people were actively performing when they were tested.
Clinic co-founder Sharon Mitchell said each case involved either a non-performer or an aspiring actor or actress who tested positive, then dropped out of the business.
County public health officials said they mislabeled all reports from the clinic as adult performers, when they had no information about their occupations. The clinic was created primarily to serve the porn industry, but also serves other clients.
"Here’s the bottom line: we’re an HIV testing center," Mitchell, said. "We don’t just test the adult entertainment industry. We have a lot of people who come who want testing from the general public."
The female actress who tested positive for HIV at their clinic earlier this month remains the only case detected in a working performer since 2004, Mitchell said.
In 2004, panic spread through the industry and briefly shut down production at several studios, after a male porn star and three actresses he worked with tested positive.
Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding said the county does not have enough information to explore these cases further.
"The system we have and the laws we have do not facilitate the kind of contact tracing and verification that we’d like to see. AIDS has been treated separately from other STDs," Fielding said.
In HIV cases, the medical clinic or doctor who conducts the test is responsible for notifying partners, Fielding said. For other sexually transmitted diseases, state laws allow the county to make partner notification.
"I’m sure that AIM provides a useful service to the degree that they prevent performers from performing when they have sexually transmitted diseases or HIV," Fielding said.
He said AIM’s efforts are "better than nothing," but not enough to prevent a life-threatening occupational hazard.
“… ‘AIDS has been treated separately from other STDs,’ Fielding said.”
What an imbecile. The whole discussion is about HIV, not AIDS. They are two separate things. The bias here is painfully clear.
A lot of people confuse HIV for AIDS. The fact is many HIV positives never get AIDS and many more have various AIDS diseases without the presence of HIV…
The fact still remains Sharon Mitchell and AIM said nothing for an entire week about any of this until the day it appeared on the forums. She would never have said anything if there was no forum posting. And whatever AIM says is meaningless to me because they have lied in this case and throughout the years. They could say the grass is green and I wouldn’t believe them. Whether or not those other cases since 2004 were not performers doesn’t matter. She never reported any of them which she has to by law whether they are porn stars or civilians.
Now the rumor is one of the quarantined is trying to book work. If that forum never happened forcing Sharon to finally come forward after a week, that quarantined performer would still be working now because no one in the adult industry would know they just performed with a woman who is HIV positive.
Right you are JS. But this guy is a doctor, and the county’s main health official, not somebody who should be carelessly confusing the two in the press.
Thanx Axis. I’m in no way suggesting the man be defended. It apropos that one of the definitions of “doctor” is to alter. Also, doctors, in order to receive their large sums of income need to follow and fully put their faith in the current orthodoxy, just as the patients who likewise follow and put their faith in doctors. But the whole HIV paradigm has been confused (and corrupted) from the start (whether that was intentional or not is another matter). I think they like to throw the word “AIDS” around whenever to scare the shit out of people, because from fear is their power.
Here’s a cool quote I found: “If you want to avoid becoming “HIV-positive”, while enjoying unprotected sex, get a job as a porn star.”
http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/porn-industry-even-freer-of-%E2%80%9Chiv%E2%80%9D-than-earlier-admitted/#comment-3842
Here’s an article titled: “Porn industry proves that “HIV” is not sexually transmitted”
http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/porn-industry-proves-that-%E2%80%9Chiv%E2%80%9D-is-not-sexually-transmitted/#comment-3837
I posted a comment with links that hasn’t as of this moment been approved by Cindi.. I just want to add someone’s observation :
How very telling that “the observed rate of testing “HIV-positive” (in the porn industry) is maybe something like 5 in 10,000″, when that is fairly close to the same rate that HIV tests are also said to register as false positives.
Also, statistics from AIM show that among 825 performers screened in 2000–2001, 7.7% of females and 5.5% of males had chlamydia, and 2% overall had gonorrhea. This is far more than the CDC stats of the general population.
However, the “HIV” transmission rate among porn actors is 5/10,000 as compared with 1/1000 in the general population.
good stats JS..
i noticed on the local news last night that OSHA went by AIM for an informal inspection and AIM let them in without even presenting a court order..
anyone have news on this?
About OSHA: “letting businesses off the hook and favoring greed above all else.”
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr/02/osha-hot-seat-09/
“a notoriously toothless agency in the Labor Department. Not surprisingly, OSHA hasn’t given whistleblowers any more protection than it has to poor workers in meatpacking plants.”
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2007/11/osha-where-good-laws-go-die
If OSHA wants to try to regulate porn, those incompetant and corrupt good for nothings should know a couple of important facts (and these important facts should be hard pressed by those legal councils hired to defend pornographers).
1. Percentage wise, there are 1/2 as many HIV+ results in the porn industry compared to the general population.
2. HIV retroviruses are much smaller than the holes in condoms so the idea that condoms protect from HIV “infection” is an illusion.
3. The amount of lost revenues due to the drop of sales in the multi-billion dollar porn industry because of any condom-only measure would further hurt the California economy.