Effective immediately, performers working for either the Red Light District or sister company Platinum X will be required to have HIV PCR-DNA testing every two weeks, in addition to other measures called for in a new HIV prevention policy for the companies that was announced today.
“We don’t have the cure for HIV, but we’re trying to control it the best we can,” Red Light District owner David Joseph told AVN.com.
The new HIV prevention policy is the result of a meeting held this morning for all of the contract performers and directors of both companies in light of recent HIV outbreak that resulted in four performers being diagnosed as HIV-positive.
A fifth performer was also diagnosed as HIV-positive last month, but was determined by AIM Healthcare Foundation to be unrelated to the outbreak.
Performers are currently required to get a new HIV test every 30 days. Both the Red Light District and Platinum X hope to minimize the danger by strictly enforcing their new policy that calls for testing every two weeks.
“If the girls come in with a test one day over two weeks, we’ll send them down for another test. We’ll pay for it when they are coming to work for us, but the rule will be strictly enforced,” Joseph said.
Women who have just started performing, or who are seeking to perform in their first scene will need to have two negative HIV tests before they can work for either company without a condom.
Vince Vouyer, production manager for the Red Light District, and owner of Vouyer Productions, said that the condom option probably wouldn’t be taken advantage of often, but the decision would be left up to each individual director.
Vouyer suggested that possible circumstances that would lead to a director invoking the condom option include “if they were behind schedule or if the woman was too hot to pass, if he just had to have her,” Vouyer said. “Its not something we’re expecting to see often, but then again, it might make it easier for some women coming in to the industry – they might prefer to work with a condom to begin with.”
Both companies are against a condom-mandatory policy, a view held by most of the adult industry. It is commonly believed such a policy would be an economic disaster for any gonzo company that agreed to it.
Veteran performer Darren James has been deemed by AIM to be “patient zero,” the person who introduced the virus into the talent pool for this outbreak. He is believed to have caught the virus in Brazil, where testing procedures are considered to be less than adequate.
There is a consensus in the adult industry that foreign shoots provided a gap in the testing protocols that needed to be addressed. Red Light District and Platinum X both shoot in foreign countries frequently, and decided to adopt a quarantine policy for those who work abroad.
Any performer who works travels to a foreign country to work for either company will be quarantined for two weeks upon their return to the United States.
Vouyer explained the policy by way of an example. “Let’s say I send a crew over to Prague, Budapest, what have you,” Vouyer said. “The day they come back they will need to get tested and again two weeks later. If they really need to work, they’ll have to use condoms.”
The final part of the new policy for both companies is adopting the protocols suggested by Adultdat.com, the new online database owned by AIM.
Created by Desi Benjamin and Adam Grey, Adultdat is a database that was built to track each performer’s work history, but depends upon the cooperation of production companies to be successful. In the event of another active performer being diagnosed as HIV-positive, AIM would be able to immediately identify all performers that were possibly exposed to the virus.
“We have a form based on the info they need at Adultdat. At the end of the shoot I fill in the blanks,” Vouyer explained, stressing that the required information needs to be input at the end of each day. “If they shoot on Monday and they put the information in on Friday, and there’s a problem on Tuesday, that’s no good. It needs to be done at the end of each day.”
