Mutt

Though the porn industry is huge when measured in dollars, it has
relatively few employees. Talent agents say there are typically 500
Triple-X actors and actresses working at any given time in Southern
California. But because the average career lasts just 18 months, the
number of people who have worked on Triple-X sets over time is
actually far higher, exceeding thousands per decade.



HIV testing
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. None of the tests came up positive for
HIV, Mitchell said. The testing was funded in part by the Los Angeles
County Health Department.

By comparison, 23,277 cases of gonorrhea were reported statewide in
2001, less than one-tenth of 1% of the state's population, according
to the Department of Health Service's division of communicable disease
control. For chlamydia, 101,871 cases were reported for the year, 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. But that and other statistics can also be
explained by the small size of the population and its abnormally high
rate of sexual activity.

The industry agreed to start AIM under pressure from Mitchell and
others, after Ballowe and several other actresses contracted HIV. "We
don't test everyone in the business," Mitchell said. "People come into
this business, and they leave this business. We can follow many of
them, but not all." For every positive test, the clinic contacted the
performers' partners and tested them as well. On average, said
Mitchell, one positive STD test for a porn star led to the discovery
of four other infections.


The figures obtained by AIM are "clearly an indication of what's
happening," says Dr. Peter Kerndt, the county health department's STD
control director. "We support AIM's effort, but we can't help them
very much financially. Our budgets are tight, and there's no public
outcry over this.

"But even we wonder why we don't have the same legal requirements in
California that they have with legalized prostitutes in Nevada."

It's a point that comes up repeatedly about health conditions in the
porn industry: Why not regulate as Nevada does?

The answer is that on the evolutionary chain of vice--from gambling to
sex--California now seems behind its neighbor state. It is Nevada that
imposes strict controls on and derives healthy revenues from legalized
gambling. It is Nevada that has devised a way to keep the legal sex
business healthy.

The worlds of legalized prostitution in Nevada and adult films in
California are strikingly similar. Nevada's legal brothels employ from
250 to 400 licensed prostitutes at any time and they typically stay in
the business only a short time, says George Flint, executive director
of the Nevada Brothel Owners Group. The women who work in the state's
26 legal brothels are required by state law to practice safe sex.
Doctors and epidemiologists alike say the rules have all but
eradicated the transmission of STDs within the workplace.

In 1999, for example, there were 28 cases of prostitutes who tested
positive for either gonorrhea or chlamydia, according to officials
with the Nevada Department of Human Resources Health Division.
Government officials say that most of those who were infected
contracted their diseases outside the brothels.

"What we've found is that the positives are nearly all from women who
are being tested [for STDs] as they enter the system for the first
time," says Dr. Randy Todd, Nevada's state epidemiologist. "On the
rare case that they've contracted after being in the system, we've
found that they've had unprotected sex with a boyfriend or husband,
and that's where the [infection] occurred." There have been no cases
of HIV since Nevada's brothels were ruled legal in the mid-1980s.

"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."

In Nevada, the state health department's Bureau of Disease Control and
Intervention Services began requiring customers in brothels to use
condoms. A violation is a misdemeanor. To have HIV and not wear a
condom is a felony.

__________________