Only AIM can investigate HIV outbreaks within the industry because only AIM knows who worked with whom. Does anyone see a potential problem?Ĭal-OSHA and county public health officials find themselves looking on in frustration. So, AIM does the testing, AIM does the PR about how well the testing works, and AIM investigates positive tests. Some studios have shut down during the investigation, but others are still making movies, presumably without condoms.ĪIM officials routinely appear in the media and at public hearings to advance the industry’s laissez faire approach to safety, citing their own work as evidence that no further regulation is needed. AIM then contacts those people, gets a list of their on- and off-camera partners and tests them.ĪIM says it “quarantines” actors who may have been exposed, but the group has no legal power. If a performer later tests positive for HIV, AIM can look up all that actor’s partners. Hence the condom rule.ĪIM maintains a database of all performers and the scenes they’ve done for each company. No matter what you do for a living, your typical day at work should be way less risky than unprotected sex with one or more strangers. Porn performers are workers in a legal industry. Even if that dubious statistic is accurate, unprotected sex with a stranger is a risky thing to do. The industry claims that AIM does such a good job that it’s safer to have sex with a porn star than with an average person off the street. Luckily, she didn’t infect any of her partners, but she easily could have. In 2009, an actress worked in the industry with HIV before testing positive. Before his next test, James had unprotected sex with 14 actresses, 3 of whom contracted the virus. He tested with AIM and was cleared to go back to work. That’s what happened in 2004 when porn star Darren James came back from Brazil with a fresh HIV infection. So, a patient can test negative during the most infectious phase of their illness. The problem is that there’s a window of at least several days between being exposed to HIV and testing positive, during which time the patient is highly infectious. The industry justifies barebacking by saying that AIM does such a good job of keeping HIV out of the talent pool and containing the virus if it somehow finds its way in. The latest infection “shows how testing just isn’t equivalent to protection,” according to Deborah Gold, a senior safety engineer at Cal-OSHA. Testing isn’t a panacea, even if everyone does everything right. Working actors are required to test every 30 days for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. “With the help of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), the adult film industry developed a corporate culture to facilitate widespread coordination among members and to make the industry similar to a private club,” Padilla writes.ĪIM is a private nonprofit whose primary function is to test performers for STDs and make the results available directly to producers, directors, agents, potential co-stars and other industry insiders.
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Alexandre Padilla, a professor of economics at Metropolitan State College of Denver, who analyzed the structure of AIM in a 2008 working paper. If you’ve heard of AIM, you probably know it as the “clinic for porn stars.” AIM does provide medical and social services to porn performers, but AIM’s true niche in the ecosystem of “Porn Valley” is much more complicated.ĪIM is also the STD testing and record-keeping clearinghouse of the San Fernando Valley’s multi-billion dollar straight porn industry, according to Dr.
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In the latest case of HIV, the actor tested positive through an industry-sanctioned program administered by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation. (By contrast, the gay porn industry is largely condom-compliant.) An estimated 1, 200− 1, 500 performers work on-camera.Ī positive test in the industry is especially alarming because the vast majority of straight porn is shot without condoms, despite the fact that California law requires condoms or equivalent protection on porn sets. Despite its flamboyant public image, the porn industry in Southern California is still a pretty small world. News of the positive test sparked widespread alarm in the industry because the infected man is reportedly a big star who’s dating another big star. The studios decided to take time out while an industry-allied clinic attempts to locate and test the man’s sexual partners.Īt this point, no one knows how many people the infected actor may have exposed to HIV, or whether he got infected at work. At least five California porn studios have shut down since an actor tested positive for HIV this week.