Actors' HIV cases halt production in porn film industry
LOS ANGELES -- Adult-film performers are lining up for HIV screenings after a pair of colleagues tested positive last week for the virus that causes AIDS, a discovery that has shut down the multibillion-dollar industry for 60 days.
On Tuesday, an actor who goes by the stage name Darren James tested positive for HIV. Two days later, actress Laura Roxx also tested positive; the pair worked together on a movie March 24. Now, at least 46 other performers are waiting for test results, to see if the infection has spread to them.
Meanwhile, producers are lining up to pledge they will adhere to a 60-day work stoppage, the incubation time needed to complete further tests to see if the infection was transmitted to anyone else, according to Dr. Sharon Mitchell, executive director of the nonprofit Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation, which administers performers' tests.
Mitchell, a former adult-film star who has a master's degree in public health and who holds a doctorate in human sexuality, said, "by and large, the industry is very conscientious and cooperative."
But she predicted 5 percent of businesses may continue filming. "It's porn. They don't close down for Christmas," she said. "I know we all have to make money here, folks, but do we have to kill people while we're doing it?"
She said her clientele has increased from 60 to about 80 people per day seeking HIV testing at her clinic in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, center of the nation's estimated $10 billion-per-year adult-film industry.
"I'm trying to get people to calm down and relax. Young girls are very concerned," she said, while older performers "have been through this before."
James has been in adult films since at least 1998. Roxx, on the other hand, is no older than 19 and has been in the business only three months, according to the industry trade journal Adult Video News.
James is thought to have contracted the virus while filming in Brazil last month, Mitchell said. He tested negative immediately upon his return, then began working until the infection showed up last week, according to Adult Video News. The Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation, or AIM, immediately recommended that the women he might have infected, and anyone they subsequently had sex with, quarantine themselves.
"It's depressing. It's something we wish would go away," said Tim Connelly, publisher of Adult Video News, which editorialized for the 60-day industry moratorium.
"It's always a shock. You like to believe you can control it," he said. "The most important thing to do is be as proactive as you can."
Because the industry is rigorous about testing and record keeping, Connelly and others said the incidence of HIV among adult-film performers is lower than in the general public.
Connelly pointed out that the industry produces about 4,000 films a year, with five or six sex scenes each. Yet this is the first HIV outbreak since 1999, and only the second since the industry enacted its voluntary testing regimen in 1998.
But Jenna Jameson, currently adult films' highest-profile star, whose celebrity has transcended into mainstream entertainment, said she thinks precautions should be broadened. Jameson, who both performs in and produces films, suggested that foreign actors and actresses, and Americans who work abroad, undergo a two-month quarantine before working in the United States.
On Friday, she also announced she was creating an assistance fund for those idled by the industry shutdown.
Others offered additional remedies for the suddenly unemployed. One production company, Juicy Entertainment, said it would consider paying people in advance for projects that will begin once the moratorium expires.
Connelly said the 20 percent of hard-core companies that use condoms in their movies might continue filming. Though it's universal in gay male pornography, condom use in straight pornography is rare because producers "believe it's more marketable without it," Connelly said.
Mitchell said producers will offer women an extra $200 to $1,000 to perform without them, an incentive she said is louder than her health warnings. "We say HIV is an occupational hazard if you don't work with a condom," Mitchell said.
Dr. Jonathan Fielding, head of the Los Angeles County Health Department, praised the adult-film industry's quick action, trying to head off any spread of the infection.
"The broader issue is, it poignantly points out the only safe sex is protected sex," he said. Even rigorous, regular HIV testing offers "no guarantee of not getting it."
"And when people see the movies," Fielding said, and watch the performers not using condoms, "they don't see the consequences. This should be a wake-up call."
