CALIFORNIA: Health Officials Issue Alert After HIV Transmission During Porn Shoot

Via the Associated Press:

California public health officials have issued an alert after finding "very strong evidence" that an adult film actor became infected with HIV as a result of unprotected sex on an out-of-state film shoot. The Department of Public Health said Monday that the male actor tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS after engaging in unprotected sex with several other male actors during two separate film shoots. He had tested negative before the shoot. "During the second film shoot, he had symptoms of a viral infection," the alert states. "The actor went to a clinic and had another blood test that showed he had recently become infected with HIV." One actor from the second shoot has since tested positive for HIV. According to the health department, lab results indicate the first actor who tested positive "probably transmitted" HIV to the second.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, backers of a Los Angeles County law that mandates the use of condoms in all porn productions, reacts via press release:

“This is not AHF or supporters of condoms claiming that an HIV transmission occurred on the set of an adult film. This is California’s Department of Public Health and OSHA Occupational Health officials who vetted the performers’ blood samples with the CDC and concluded after genetic sequencing that this HIV infection occurred on set,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF). “For years adult film producers have claimed that performers who have tested HIV-positive while working in the industry did not contract HIV in the industry, but became infected through exposure in their personal lives outside and away from adult film sets. This new case puts truth to the lie that the industry has promoted year-after-year, years that sadly saw several additional performers infected while working in the porn industry.”

The number of permits for porn shoots in Los Angeles County have declined by 90% since the condom law went into effect in 2013. The AHF has vowed to place the issue to a statewide referendum after a bill to widen the Los Angeles County law failed to advance in the California legislature. The AHF has also published numerous ads in the national press denouncing the use of Truvada as a daily HIV preventive.