California porn industry hit by HIV crisis

[apples and oranges]

Is it time to require all pornography actors to wear condoms, no exceptions?

A porn actor's positive HIV test has prompted an increasing number of America's largest adult film companies to halt production while an industry clinic locates and tests the performer's on-screen sex partners.

The revelation this week further highlighted the lack of condom use among actors routinely exposed in the course of a day's work to bodily fluids capable of spreading myriad sexually transmitted diseases.

The $13 billion porn industry, concentrated in Los Angeles' largely suburban San Fernando Valley, operates under a self-imposed system of monthly blood testing and monitoring. Actors pay for their own tests, performed at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks, a private, nonprofit founded in 1996.

Rumor swirled around the industry about the identity of "patient zero." Adult Video News reported on its Web site, AVN.com, that sources had identified the patient "as a male performer who performed in both straight and gay adult videos."

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AIDS/hiv-actors-positive-test-unsettles-hub-us-porn/story?id=11892877

[Touchdown]

1. It seems to happen every 2-3 years on porn.

The risk comes with the job. HIV has a gestation period of 6 months. It may not show up in tests until an actor has done 20 films since contracting it.

From what I've seen, almost all straight porn is filmed without condoms, whereas the majority of gay porn, condom use is standard practice.

[PCIntern]

2. It's hard to believe that

having unprotected sex with strangers could possibly be a problem.

:sarcasm: