Three years after an HIV outbreak rocked the San Fernando Valley's adult-entertainment industry, Los Angeles health officials say production studios have failed to maintain rigorous safety standards and are imperiling hundreds of performers.
While no cases have been reported since four adult-movie performers tested positive for HIV in April 2004, health officials say they are increasingly concerned that nearly all studios have dropped — or never even adopted — strict condoms-only policies.
Worried about the potential for another HIV outbreak, a coalition of public, nonprofit and academic health leaders has been lobbying state lawmakers to tighten regulations.
"The reality is, an HIV epidemic could happen tomorrow," said Paula Tavrow, adjunct assistant professor in the community health sciences department at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We have no safeguards in place to prevent that."
The 2004 outbreak prompted studios to impose a temporary moratorium on production. Amid calls for government regulation, many also required performers to use condoms during filming even though studio executives worried about a potential loss in revenue because of the restrictions. Some were concerned that condoms would ruin the on-camera aesthetic of films' sex scenes.
Today, however, industry officials say almost all studios have reverted to condom-optional policies and instead rely on periodic health screenings — a practice their lobbyists defend as effective and comprehensive.
But Peter R. Kerndt, director of the sexually transmitted disease program with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, says periodic screening is inadequate.
Officials note that the male actor believed to have transmitted HIV to three female performers through unprotected sex in 2004 also had been regularly tested.
"They've totally relapsed," said Kerndt, who has provided technical support to the coalition lobbying for tighter legislation. "It's like it never happened. There's little regard and no protection for the people who work in this industry."
Kerndt said advocates, including the Los Angeles-based AIDS Health Care Foundation, have had difficulty finding a lawmaker to author tougher legislation.
Foundation President Michael Weinstein said his organization has talked with many legislators but none has signed on.
"This is a worker health-and-safety issue, a women's issue, a human-rights issue," Kerndt said. "This is the last at-risk population exposed unnecessarily to the risk of HIV and a host of other sexually transmitted diseases."
John Schunhoff, county Department of Public Health chief deputy director, said the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and county health officials have supported efforts to make the industry safer, but so far have opted against sponsoring a bill.
"We have to pick our battles," Schunhoff said, although he noted health officials still might weigh in if there is an amended bill this session.
"If there is an opportunity of our becoming more active and to really make a difference, we'll do so," he said.
Sharon Mitchell, a founder and executive director of the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation in Sherman Oaks, said condoms should be used, but mandating them could backfire.
Mitchell said "renegade" performers could just go underground and even give up the current monthly voluntary testing.
"They'll run for the hills," Mitchell said. "This is a population, you tell them to do something, and they won't do anything.
"We're not in the real world, we're in the world of porn."
Mitchell, a former adult-film star who helped launch nationwide regular testing in the porn industry for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases after an HIV outbreak in 1998, also questioned the political will to enforce tougher regulations.
"People want their potholes filled. Who's going to pay for inspectors to sit around and watch people put on a condom?"
In the past decade, 17 adult-entertainment performers have tested positive for HIV, including two male performers who infected a total of nine women. Testing caught six others before the virus could be passed on, she said.
Tavrow — who hosted a UCLA round table last fall on the issue with academics, lawyers, legislators' representatives, and porn producers and performers — said a state law is overdue.
"Everyone knows from a health (perspective) this is a slam dunk, but there is just so much sensitivity," Tavrow said. "Few legislative offices see a large grass-roots constituency for it. Senators and Assembly members say, 'What's in it for me? Will this win me votes?' A lot of people are worried to be painted with the porn brush, as it were. They don't want to come out as 'Mr. Porn.'"
Senator Sheila Kuehl who chairs the Senate's Health Committee, said the subject is an important workplace issue.
But she said there has been little support for tougher legislation because health officials have been unwilling or unable to do the work required, HIV activists haven't rallied behind it and hundreds of other measures compete for lawmakers' attention.
Under current state code, employers face civil penalties for failing to protect employees from possible exposure to blood-borne pathogens.
But Len Welsh, acting chief of the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said his agency has difficulty enforcing the regulation in the porn industry because most performers are not full-time studio employees.
"We've had round-table discussions how to get at it and no one seems to have a good answer," Welsh said. "It's one of those things like immigration: Everyone agrees it's a problem, but no one has a solution."
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