Sharon Mitchell \nSHERMAN OAKS, CA - Sharon Mitchell had a busy November - the adult film legend and current guiding light behind the Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation (AIM) toured Budapest, Hungary to teach HIV and sexually-transmitted diseases to seminars in the Hungarian capital.
Mitchell says she made the trip at the behest of her friend and fellow adult performer Anita Rinaldi. "I have taken it as my personal calling to educate, inform, and inspire my fellow talent members," says Mitchell. "The trip to Budapest working with Anita Rinaldi and our European friends proves that solutions lie in the similarities, not the differences."
She taught at the Hotel Ibis for two days and provided various protective measures to her listeners. She also sought out a laboratory that performs PCR/DNA testing. "They do the same as AIM does in 24-hour turnaround for about $(US)70," she says. "On the lab premises, they also have a gynecologist and she and I worked out effective STD, Pap smear, and bacteria serology screenings, also very cost effective. So now we have similar programs in both continents where the porn family co-exists."
Mitchell has been a passionate advocate of health issues in the adult entertainment industry for a very long time, though it became even more acute this fall when veteran porn star Tony Montana tested HIV positive, triggering a massive quarantine and testing which affected some of the industry's other leading lights, until they were all cleared within a three-week period following Montana's diagnosis.
Mitchell plans another educational trip, to Grenele University in Iowa Dec. 1, before returning home to prepare for the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas Jan. 6-9. The first date will also feature AIM's "Another 40th Birthday," with Mitchell, Nina Hartley, Ron Jeremy and Friends at the Spearmint Rhino on the Las Vegas Strip.
