Los Angeles Times: “In California’s Unregulated Porn Film Industry, an Alarming Number of Performers Are Infected With HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases. And Nobody Seems to Care.”

As reported in the Los Angeles Times, 1/12/03…

[I]n studios in the San Fernando Valley…actors and actresses were working on movies. They put in long hours, commonly without meal breaks. They often worked without clean toilets, toilet paper, soap or water. More importantly, they were exposed to a host of infectious, and sometimes fatal, diseases…

[A]ctors and actresses are discouraged from wearing prophylactics during filming because porn producers believe the public wants to see unprotected sex. So adult porn stars commonly engage in sexual acts with scores of partners, and then return each evening to their private lives–dating or having relationships with people across Southern California…

But California regulators and political officials don’t believe the public is worried about protecting the porn stars themselves– despite the enormous popularity of the films they produce. As David Gurley, staff attorney for the California Labor Commissioner’s office, says: “Porn stars–people think they’re not worth the time. The public sees these people as disposable…”

“The fact that no one’s watching this industry is shocking,” [former Surgeon General C. Everett] Koop says. “How many people have to be infected with an STD before someone does something?”…

Actress Anne Marie Ballowe is a former porn star who flourished in the burgeoning business… Legal and medical records show she walked away from the business in 1998 with chlamydia, which could make her sterile; cytomegalovirus, which could eventually make her blind; hepatitis C, which has damaged her liver; and HIV, which could cause AIDS and probably kill her. According to medical records, her liver is too damaged–in part because of the hepatitis–to allow her to take the anti-viral drugs that could delay the onset of AIDS… “I know people hate what we do,” she says. “But porn stars make a lot of money for other people. If farmworkers have rights, so should we. The laws need to change…”

Some companies, such as Vivid Video Inc. in Van Nuys and VCA Pictures in Chatsworth, insist performers bring a recent HIV test to the set and use condoms when they perform. But dozens of Triple-X filmmakers have no such requirements. Even at those that do, the rules can be easily overlooked, according to interviews with more than three dozen actresses working for various Triple-X companies…

Gay pornographers abide by a different set of rules: No condom, no HIV test, no audience. Nearly all gay Triple-X production studios throughout the industry demand condom use and other protections. The decision is rooted in financial concerns. While there is a niche audience for films that depict unprotected sex, few retail and Internet outlets will carry such movies for fear of drawing public criticism.

“They all wear condoms,” says Roger Tansey, former executive director of Aid For AIDS, a West Hollywood-based nonprofit that provides financial assistance for people with HIV. “Gay actors and gay viewers don’t see unprotected sex as a fantasy. They see it as watching death on the screen…”

The extent of infection among those performers is unknown because no government or regulatory medical agency has ever tracked the industry consistently. The limited data that does exist is alarming. The Adult Industry Medical HealthCare Foundation (AIM), an industry- backed clinic in Sherman Oaks, administered voluntary tests to a group consisting primarily of adult film workers. Of 483 people tested between October 2001 and March 2002, about 40% had at least one disease. Nearly 17% tested positive for chlamydia, 13% for gonorrhea and 10% for hepatitis B and C, according to Sharon Mitchell, a former adult actress who founded AIM…

For chlamydia, 101,871 cases were reported for the year [in California as a whole], or about three-tenths of 1%–a rate health officials consider epidemic. The chlamydia rates in the porn world are about 57 times higher than those epidemic proportions…

[S]ays Dr. Peter Kerndt, the county health department’s STD control director, “…[E]ven we wonder why we don’t have the same legal requirements in California that they have with legalized prostitutes in Nevada…”

“If we had the numbers you’re seeing in California, our phones wouldn’t stop ringing,” says Rick Sowadsky, health program specialist for the Nevada State Health Division. He says the infection rates in California’s adult film business “are unreal. What a public health crisis…”

What happens on these sets is invisible to elected officials in Sacramento, where each spring pornographers travel to meet with state legislators in a daylong lobbying blitz. Under the banner of the Free Speech Coalition, a 900-member San Fernando Valley-based trade group for the adult entertainment industry, moviemakers and former actresses knock on doors and stump over taxation issues. They have lobbied against regulation and pass out industry-funded research that touts their economic impact on California: an estimated $31 million in state sales tax from the rentals of 130 million adult videos and nearly $1.8 billion in Internet sales and Web site traffic nationwide…

“We are a mainstream business, pure and simple,” says Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Video Inc., a leading supplier of erotica to major entertainment companies such as AOL Time Warner Inc., AT&T Corp. and DirecTV, the satellite TV service controlled by General Motors Corp. “We are nothing more than widget makers.”

They are widget makers with one exception: Other industries are monitored for health and safety violations in the workplace.

In the heterosexual adult film business, producers may not demand the use of condoms, but they do require actors and actresses to sign documents meant to excuse the filmmakers of liability. A typical contract from Vivid says the company is not responsible, and will pay no medical costs, for “sexually transmitted diseases…such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), herpes, hepatitis and other related diseases…”

Ballowe’s lawsuit alleges that [fellow actor Marc S.] Goldberg lied when signing the document [and then infected her with HIV on the set], and that the attempt to force her to waive worker’s compensation rights was not lawful.

Legal experts called by The Times agree. Employees cannot be forced to sign away their legal rights to work in a safe environment–or to earn a minimum wage, overtime pay and enjoy the protection of workers’ compensation insurance.

“You cannot have a provision that goes against public policy,” says John Laviolette, an entertainment lawyer who represents numerous mainstream Hollywood producers. “If you’re an employer and one of your employees experiences an injury while on the job, those injuries will be covered.”

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“[M]ost porn stars receive extra money–as little as $50 per sex act–if they forgo condoms.”

From the Los Angeles Times, “Clinic Offers Aid, Haven to Region’s Sex Workers”, 5/21/01