It wasnt until I became embroiled int he contentious issue of HIV prevention in ponr in 1993 that the doctor who crated the WHO-administered AIDS-control program in the bordellos of Bangkok explained to me how what had happened the Leather Communtiy could happen in porn just as easily.
 
That was the first time I heard the term Tribal Epidemiology. When memboers of a sociall or georgaphically isolated tribe are promiscuous only anmong their own kind, they arent at any particular risk of infecting eachohter with anything serious. HOWEVER, if a sexually communicable disease breached the tribes isolation, not only will it meet an unresistant population, it WILL BE passed quickly among them, precisely because of their expectaion of safety among their own kind. "Everything’s fine until one member of the tribe is infected," he warned,"but after that the entire group is immeddiately at risk"
 
A situation arose in which an incoming female performer was tested on a Friday, and put to work by an over eager producer over the weekend before her test results could come back. When they did, they came back positive.  From only two working days she had managed to expose seven other performers.  That s how Tribal epidemiology works. Theought the porn industry was  much smaller that it is  today, I still find it remarkable that only about 25 of us thought this warning shot was serious enough to merit speaking out in favor of an industry-wide policy of universal condom use for all scenes involving vaginal or anal fucking.  WIth the minimum testing window of 30 days  possible using available technology and the alarmign rate of exposure we’d observed, that seemed like the only responsible positition.
 
Not since the Harlan County Wars had such a vicious anti-labor tactics been unleased on a group of activist workers.  After a noisy, angry all industry meeting at the old Track Tech Studios, which Dr. Krysz described as "the worst day of my entire career in public health," a group of anti-condom performers was formed with considerable ‘encouragement" from agents and producers. The Antils disrupted the Pros meetings, spread the uslies personal slurs imaginalbe about their  leadership and generally actes as scab unios do. There were many angry confromtations, out of which arose some of the hostilities, both individual and collective, that are still eveident within our community today.
 
MEANWHILE,WITHOUT EVER SAYING AS MUCH, THE PRODUCERS SIMPLY STOPPED GIVING EMPLOYMENT TO THOSE THEY PERCEIVED AS AGITATORS.  Efforts to persuade the largest producers with the most to lose to see, if nothing else, a liability interst in harm reduction, met with no success. Not a single company wouldcommit to a condom policy.
 
At the time, fed up with being called a Nazi, and threatened with physical violence, I stood up in fromt of a panes of producers at the annual gathering of the industrys primary lobbying group the FSC, and warned that, with the miserable excuse for a policy in place,"The only thing I can promise you is that we’ll all be back in this room talking about this again, sooner or later."
 
 
BY ERNEST GREENE(a long time ago).
 
 
 
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it WIll the porn industry ever learn?