LAS VEGAS—Earlier today, the Las Vegas affiliate of National Public Radio, in reaction to recent reports regarding an HIV infection which took place on a gay video set in Las Vegas back in September, hosted a discussion about the possibility that condoms (and other barrier protections) might be required on adult sets in Nevada. Guests for the program were former adult star and current Daily Beast correspondent Aurora Snow, performer and healthcare activist Lorelei Lee, AIDS Healthcare Foundation consultant Adam Cohen, and Free Speech Coalition CEO Diane Duke.
The discussion followed on the heels of an L.A. Weekly article referencing a joint statement issued late last year by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services and the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration which stated in part that "[Federal] law requires employers to protect their employees who are occupationally exposed to blood or OPIM [Other Potentially Infectious Material]," and also an AHF press release pushing for the state to apply its existing health rules for Nevada's legal brothels to adult movie and content shoots.
"In the twenty-seven years that Nevada has required condom use in its brothels, there has not been a single case of HIV transmission found in, or tied to Nevada brothels," said AHF president Michael Weinstein. "By comparison, since 2004, public health officials—including CDC officials—have documented on-set transmission of at least four HIV infections in performers while they were actually working on adult film sets. Since that same time, over two-dozen adult performers were found to be infected with HIV while they were working in the industry. Nevada’s move to apply and enforce the same health and safety regulations in the porn industry as its brothels seems like a no-nonsense move that will protect adult film workers as well as the public they may ultimately interact with."
As adult industry members already know, Weinstein's claim of four on-set HIV infections since 2004 is a lie, at least as applied to the hetero segment of the industry which tested at industry-approved health clinics like AIM and which now uses clinics approved by the Performer Availability Screening Services (PASS), as is his claim that over two dozen performers were found to be HIV-infected in the ensuing ten years.
The show's moderator, whose name was not given during the segment, first spoke with Snow, inquiring whether during her ten years in front of the cameras, when "performers contracted HIV from time to time" (which, of course, they didn't after 2004), performers discussed the situation among themselves, and asked how they felt about it.
"I think the first thing people feel is very sorry for whoever that performer is, because obviously, nobody wants to go to work and contract that sort of disease or any disease, really," stated Snow, who supports the use of condoms. "We all do our best to be as safe as we can within the parameters given, and even though condoms should be a choice and shouldn't have to be regulated, they in fact are not a choice for most performers. ... Had I chosen to use condoms, I would have worked less frequently and not had the career that I had."
Snow admitted that she had worked with a performer who became HIV-positive—obviously Darren James, though she didn't mention his name—at some point during her career, and that she was thankful that he had not yet become infected when they worked together. She also said that the possibility of contracting an incurable disease like HIV frightened her, and that fear was part of her motivation for leaving the industry. She noted that on one set, she had balked at working with an actor who had a rash of unknown origin, and eventually did not do the scene, but that "I don't know how many other girls still feel guilty, even, about speaking up" about such things. She also said that, "Unfortunately, I don't think the industry promotes workplace safety enough," though she lauded Wicked Pictures for its mandatory condom policy.
The moderator next brought on 14-year adult veteran Lorelei Lee, who said she opposed both Measure B and mandatory condoms laws in general, and that while the industry's testing protocols had had "flaws" in the past, "actually using our protocols, which we call the PASS system, the mandatory testing system, there hasn't been an on-set transmission of HIV in over ten years. Performers who have tested positive during that time have been prevented from transmitting HIV on set because they caught it after an exposure in their private lives, and have been prevented from transmitting HIV on set because of the PASS system, which is a very rigorous testing system that we have in place."
She noted that after the passage of Measure B, "it became very clear that condom mandates don't work; they don't increase performer empowerment on set and they don't increase condom use in adult films," but that performers should have the power to choose whether to use them or not. Lee admitted that she also had worked with a performer who later became HIV-positive, and that that realization had scared her, but noted that the performer's infection was discovered through the PASS system's testing and prevented from spreading it on adult sets, "so it works." She also explained how the system works when an HIV-positive performer is discovered: that all performers who worked with the infected individual are themselves tested for the disease.
When the moderator pressed her to compare condom use on sets to a motorcycle rider wearing a helmet, Lee noted that condoms actually create more problems than they solve.
"Condoms are not made for adult film use," she explained. "The kinds of interactions that people have in their bedrooms usually lasts about 15 minutes. On set, it it takes one to two hours of penetration to film a scene, and that increase in friction causes a couple of different things: It causes condoms to break and break and break, and also, for many female performers, it causes something called 'condom rash,' which are micro-abrasions that then can make you more susceptible to STI transmission. So for a lot of women in this industry, condoms are not the answer and they don't make us feel safer."
In response to yet another question, she also denied that her opinions were influenced by the fact that adult content viewers feel that condoms detract from the fantasy aspect of porn.
"That is not actually a concern of mine," she said. "Of course, I want the industry to succeed and I want to continue to work; I really love my job and I love my co-workers very much, but my biggest concern is performer safety and health, so that's the reason I don't think there should be a condom mandate, is for performer safety and health."
Next on the schedule was Adam Cohen, a "public health consultant" for AIDS Healthcare, who agreed with the moderator's assertion that as a consequence of Measure B, "more film shoots have gone underground," noting that the number of shoots in Los Angeles County has not decreased even with the new law. However, Cohen claimed that the adult industry couldn't really "go underground" because it has to comply with the §2257 record-keeping and labeling laws, which he claimed prevented companies from selling condomless films in stores. However, Lorelei Lee corrected him, noting that the required 2257 records have no effect on where or when a movie is shot, nor whether the performers use condoms.
Cohen also claimed that according to the Department of Public Health, the performer who apparently infected a second performer in September "initially tested at an industry-approved testing facility and had a negative HIV test, and they used the Aptima test, which is actually a very high-tech, high-quality testing system." However, neither of those claims is true: the initial performer did not test at an industry-approved facility, and the test he took was reportedly an ELISA test, which the industry abandoned more than 15 years ago as unreliable.
Cohen also lauded the Nevada Public Health system's track record in disease prevention, and said he hoped he could work with them in forcing adult performers to use barrier protections—but that condom use would have little to no effect of industry revenues.
The discussion's final speaker was Diane Duke, who began by correcting several of the statements made by Snow and Cohen (such as Cohen's statement that porn shot in the San Fernando Valley didn't come under Measure B's permitting requirements), and then discussed the industry's testing protocols, which she described as "exemplary," and noted that The New York Times had termed the industry's PASS system as "the unlikely model for HIV prevention." She also said that epidemiologists and other medical professionals had deemed the program "more effective or at least as effective as condoms."
"That's the great thing about this program," she continued, "is we are able to react almost immediately," and contrasted that with government health departments which are "much, much slower than our program is. As soon as somebody in a two-week time span has tested positive for HIV, we then immediately identify all of their partners and make sure everybody's tested and that nothing has happened with that."
However, when the moderator suggested that the industry's testing protocols had not worked in the incident in September, Duke pointed out that that set had not been PASS-compliant.
"They used paper tests, they used tests that were not—all the tests have to be the tests that I just spoke of. They're nto in the database, so we're not sure that all the tests were accurate and hadn't been tampered with, so I can't really speak to them because it was not a PASS-compliant set. The danger of the situation is when this kind of regulation can push studios out of the state or underground. Not everybody is following the same protocols, so more and more folks are coming on and more and more studios are coming on. We have the majority of the studios involved, but there are one or two studios, a few studios that have not come up to PASS compliance, but for the most part, our industry is in the PASS set, which is why we haven't had a transmission of HIV."
Finally, when asked why Nevada shouldn't pass a Measure B-type law of its own, Duke noted, "In L.A. County, every day, there's five new cases of HIV. In our industry, nationwide, we went ten years without a transmission on set, and especially for the PASS system."
The NPR discussion was especially timely, since rumors have recently been floated that an unnamed Nevada legislator would be introducing a Measure B type of law when the legislature convenes for its bi-annual session on February 2—a rumor which was given short shrift in the L.A. Weekly article—and of course, AHF has recently become active in Nevada, having made at least one complaint to health officials about a non-condom set ... whose content was entirely blowjobs!
Pictured, l-r: Aurora Snow, Lorelei Lee.
