Mutt

See No Evil
* 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.

By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff Writer

During production of the 1997 movie "Mimic," American Humane Assn.
representatives wandered through the Los Angeles set, ensuring that a
herd of cockroaches was well taken care of. Licensed animal handlers
were to follow state and federal anti-cruelty laws designed to protect
the insects, which had been trained to swirl around actress Mira
Sorvino's feet. The roaches had to be fed at a certain time. They
could only work a few hours each day. They could not be harmed.

At the same time, in studios in the San Fernando Valley, scores of
other 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.

These performers were making heterosexual adult films for an industry
that in California is entirely legal, and utterly unregulated. Its
producers take in several billion dollars annually from cable
television programming, videos and Internet sites watched by a public
whose appetite seems insatiable. They pay taxes, lobby in Sacramento
and contribute to political campaigns.

Yet actors 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.

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