1. Performers’ personal lives
   Porn performers have sex with people other than their scene partners, be they lovers, tricks or random guys in bars. One of the unfortunate facts of this business is that having sex with the right people gets women work. Directors, producers, agents, you name it – they’re screwing talent. And most of them are not getting tested. Not to mention that a lot of stars escort on the side, possibly without condoms. This is a huge X factor in the STI equation.
2. Agents concerned with profit above girls’ safety
   As director Donny Long very ineloquently pointed out, agencies in LA routinely send their female talent to shoots to work with men they know have done gay/bisexual scenes without telling the girls. This may not sound like a problem on the surface, but as I mentioned before, the gay industry does not test. So many of the performers are HIV+ and rely exclusively on condoms for protection. Between condom failure rates and barebacking movies, the chances of actors who do gay work getting HIV would seem to be far higher than those who only work with women. Combine that with a 30 day testing window and you have a problem.
3. Ineffective testing requirements
   Not only is a 30 day time lapse between HIV tests far too long, there is no requirement to test for all of the sexually transmitted diseases that are at best unhealthy and at worst possibly fatal. Hepatitis B and C can be passed through sexual contact and can ultimately cause death in afflicted individuals. Most talent get only the “AIM Panel” – HIV-1 DNA by PCR & Chlamydia and Gonorrhea by PCR. These are important tests, but they aren’t adequate by themselves.
4. Sharon Mitchell
   You may remember Sharon Mitchell as a performer. She is also the co-founder and director of AIM, the primary organization responsible for keeping talent safe. “Doctor” Mitchell has a Ph.D from an unaccredited university and absolutely no background in public health. To make matters worse, she is so unscrupulous that she agreed to be an expert witness for the defense in a rape trial in 2004. For those unfamiliar with the case, Ms. Mitchell testified that a young girl who’d been drugged and gang-raped was actually attempting to make a porn film and was conscious while having bottles and pool cues unflinchingly shoved into her orifices. Sharon Mitchell apparently knew this even though she is not a medical doctor or qualified in any other way to make that assertion. Her testimony was so worthless that the judge threw it out. The fact that this woman runs the only organization standing between performers and life-threatening diseases is something I find personally reprehensible.

In tomorrow’s post, I’ll discuss the proposals being put forward to protect talent in the industry and why some well-meaning people may be putting performers’ heath in danger.

Related posts:

1. New HIV Infection Reported in Porn Industry: The Facts as We Know Them
2. How We Can Make the Porn Industry Safer