Sad Article on the Porn Industry

[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.

[Mutt]

In the words of former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, when told
about the lack of oversight of the adult film industry: "These folks
are a reservoir. They don't just have sex with one another. They have
sex with regular people outside their business--doctors, lawyers,
teachers, your next-door neighbor."

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."

Told of those remarks, and similar ones by other California officials,
former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said: "That's ridiculous.
That's the same thing we heard about the gay community back in the
early days of AIDS." Koop was an early crusader in the fight against
the disease.

Koop and others note that in Nevada, legal brothels are subject to
stringent state oversight--and the spread of sexually transmitted
disease in that industry has been reduced to trace amounts. In
California, the adult film business, which has expanded to include the
most risque forms of sex widely referred to as Triple X, is remarkably
similar in scope to Nevada's legalized prostitution in terms of the
number of people employed and the nature of the job. Yet the only
monitoring in Triple X is a form of modest self-regulation by some
companies that request health tests before performers go on camera.
But even that practice is neither widespread nor tightly monitored.
"The fact that no one's watching this industry is shocking," 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. She was born in Taegu City, S. Korea, the
daughter of a U.S. serviceman and a South Korean woman. The family
moved to the United States, where her parents soon divorced. Her
mother gave her to her father, who was living in a small Missouri
town, when Ballowe was 7. She says she was raped by schoolmates at age
16. The following year she ran away to Los Angeles with dreams of a
better life.

She found it. Sort of.

Ballowe became famous, paid thousands of dollars to grin for the
camera, prance beneath the hot lights--and have sex with strangers.
For years she enjoyed the perks of her job, shuttling around town in
limousines, attending hot Hollywood parties, dating famous athletes
and rock 'n' roll gods. During her seven years in the business, she
starred in scores of Triple-X films.

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.

Along the way, she also became a drug addict, and she has exhibited
symptoms of schizophrenia. Today the 29-year-old former actress lives
in Honolulu. There, sitting inside an AIDS clinic for homeless
patients, waiting for medication, she hides her past behind an
engaging smile. "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."

Hours later, staring at the TV screen inside a friend's apartment,
Ballowe watches a clip from a 1998 video she made for Hard Core
Television and K-Beech Video Inc. It is the film in which Ballowe has
alleged she was infected with HIV by an actor named Marc S. Goldberg.
She was paid $10,000 for her work, but records show the check bounced
just days after she learned that she was HIV positive.

As the video plays, Ballowe quietly excuses herself and walks into the
bathroom, locking the door behind her. Water runs into the sink,
nearly muffling the sound of retching.

[Mutt]

Ballowe's rise and fall in the business is not unusual, but her
reaction is. She filed a lawsuit with the California Workers'
Compensation Appeal Board against Hard Core Television, the producer
of the video, and K-Beech, the distributor. Ballowe alleges that
Goldberg faked a test showing he was HIV negative. Included in the
lawsuit is a copy of an HIV test supposedly taken by Goldberg on March
21, 1997, nearly a year before the two actors worked together. The
result is negative.

The document says the test was conducted by the Medical Science
Institute in Burbank--a laboratory that filed for bankruptcy in 1995,
and whose assets were purchased by Physicians Clinical Laboratory Inc.
in February 1997. The document also shows that Goldberg's blood sample
was taken at Northeast Valley Health Corp.'s Pacoima offices, by a
physician identified only as "Martinez."

Officials from Northeast Valley told The Times that no doctor by that
name worked at their facilities during this time. "We had a doctor
named Martinez, but he left and moved out of the area back in 1985,"
says Kimberly Wyard, chief executive officer.

Goldberg could not be reached for comment despite nearly two dozen
attempts to contact him by phone and in person at his home and at the
video company where he works. No response from Goldberg to Ballowe's
lawsuit is on file with the state. Hard Core Television and K-Beech
have filed papers denying responsibility.

Ballowe's suit says that during several days of filming in Chatsworth
in February 1998, the actress had sex with about 25 men--a mix of
actors established in the business, would-be stars trying to get a
break in the industry and adult-film fans who had been recruited at
adult video stores. Most of the men showed up at the set with
paperwork that declared they were HIV-negative. Some wore condoms.
Others, like Goldberg, did not.

"I had known Marc for years, so I didn't make him wear one," Ballowe
says in an interview. "I was going on good faith" that he was not
infected. In her lawsuit, Ballowe says that K-Beech and Hard Core
failed to provide a safe work environment, as required by state law.
Specifically, she claims the businesses failed to "verify the health
certificates provided . . . to ensure their accuracy and reliability."
She also claims the companies failed "to furnish and use safety
devices and safeguards for the benefit of the employee . . . with
knowledge that serious injury to applicant would be a probable
result."

"If I was a prostitute in Nevada, I'd still be alive," she says in an
interview. "If I'd been a migrant farmworker, I'd still be alive. As
it is, I'm dead. I'll be buried before I get wrinkles."

Ballowe's lawsuit has become the leading example cited by all those
who argue for regulation of the industry. It was filed in 1998, at a
time when, one by one, porn actresses were testing positive for HIV.
Among industry veterans, those years are now known as "the dark
times." In January of that year, actress Tricia Devereaux tested
positive. She was followed by Ballowe in March; a Hungarian performer,
who used only the stage name Caroline, in April; and Kimberly Jade in
May.

"I could have given this to my boyfriend," Jade says. "Any of us could
have and not known because we were getting tested only once a month,
for HIV. The only thing we all have in common is Marc. But we had no
idea how to prove that he did it."

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.

"It's up to the talent to say [to other performers], 'Let me see your
HIV test,' or 'Hey, I need a condom,' " says Robert Herrera,
production chief of Simon Wolf Productions in Chatsworth. "It'd be
great to have everyone wear a condom and a good thing to force
everyone to test for everything. But it's impossible to do that in
this business."

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."

[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.

[Mutt]

The brothels also have a huge financial incentive to follow the law.
"If the police catch one of the workers not using a condom, the house
gets hit with a fine," says Dennis Hof, owner of several brothels,
including the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nev. "The second
time it happens, the house gets shut down permanently. That will not
happen to us. That's why we hire people to go in and test the girls
[on using condoms] ourselves."

Brothels keep health and test records for each prostitute. Once a
week, the women are required to visit a doctor, or the doctors arrive
at the brothels themselves. Blood and urine are drawn and sent off to
one of a handful of state-regulated labs. Local authorities can--and
do--stop by for periodic checks on the paperwork.

A main objective of the monitoring is to keep the operation thriving.
"If we had the disease rate you see in the porn world, we'd be out of
business tomorrow," says Flint. "All it would take is one customer
saying he picked up an STD in one of our houses, and our industry
would be gone."

To offset the state's regulatory costs, prostitutes pay a host of
fees--ranging from the required medical tests, as well as state
registration and licensing fees. Last year, those brought in about
$175,000 in Nye County, where a dozen brothels operate. That's a
relatively small amount in a county with a general budget of $50
million. But the impact is clearly felt: The county's emergency
services received $60,000 from the licensing fees, which was used to
pay for new ambulances.

Prostitutes regularly face pressure to avoid using condoms, says Dr.
Alexa Albert, author of "Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women." Her
research, detailed in the book and in reports for the American Journal
of Public Health, showed that more than 65% of the women said at least
one of their customers had balked at wearing a condom each month,
offering as much as $1,000 to do without. None of the women Albert
interviewed said she had agreed to unprotected sex.

"Each brothel has to have the disease status on file from their
workers," says Albert, a gaduate of Harvard Medical School. "There's
too much at risk legally."

In California's Triple-X world, there is no legal risk because no one
is watching over the business. "If California is the only state where
it's legal to be paid for having sex in front of a camera, it's going
to be up to the state of California and the local agencies to do
something about regulating it," says Frederick S. Lane III, an
attorney and author of "Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of
Pornography in the Cyber Age."

"But it would be political suicide for anyone in government to come
forward and try to start regulating the porn industry," Lane says.
"That's why nothing's been done." Though there are labor laws in place
that could be enforced, new legislation would be needed to bring
California in line with Nevada's regulations.

Actresses Britni Taylor and Savannah Rain lean against the back wall
of a crowded North Hollywood soundstage. They listen, occasionally
yawning, as cameraman Glenn Baren and his all-male crew from the
production shop Extreme Associates try to figure out how to
reconfigure the small set to accommodate various camera angles. Baren
paces across the concrete floor, listening to suggestions from the
crew. The actresses stare at the ceiling. No one asks their opinion.
Finally, it's decided: The first scene will be shot from the foot of
the bed.

There are no condoms on the set. There's no toilet paper in the
bathroom. The performers brought boxes of baby wipes. Soiled sheets
litter the ground, creating a trail to the bed. For more than two
hours, Taylor and Rain engage in unprotected sexual acts with a male
performer.

During a break, Rain asks director Thomas Zupko for her co-workers'
HIV tests. Handed a stack of papers, she flips through the documents.
One is missing--Taylor's. Rain asks repeatedly for her paperwork, but
she balks. "I don't have [expletive] AIDS," Taylor finally says. "I am
not [having sex with] you."

Stunned, Rain says nothing. Minutes pass, then Baren picks up the
camera and filming continues.

Off to the side, an actress mutters: "That is why we take so many
prescriptions."

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.

[Chong]

christ, couldn't you have just linked us to something?

[Mutt]

Among the lobbyists at last year's meetings was porn actress Julie
Meadows. She wandered the hallways with a list of politicians she
would visit. Her task: talk about pending legislation, including
debate over tax breaks and real estate laws that could either hurt or
help adult filmmakers. Meadows begins knocking on doors, including
those of Democratic Sen. Kevin Murray of Culver City, chairman of the
Select Committee on the Entertainment Industry, and Democratic Sen.
Richard Alarcon of Van Nuys, chairman of the Senate Labor Committee.

"They didn't ask a lot of questions," Meadows, who works for VCA
Pictures, said afterward. "When they did, it was all about the
business. There were no questions about the day-to-day activities of
our job, or what happens on the set."

Months later, when asked about Meadows' visit to Murray's office, his
spokeswoman, Yolanda Sandoval, told The Times that the senator
"doesn't remember seeing them this year." Alarcon declined to comment.

Other lawmakers who chair health or labor committees in Sacramento
also declined to comment on the lack of regulation of the Triple-X
industry. Among those called by The Times were Democratic Assemblyman
Paul Koretz of West Hollywood, who chairs the Labor and Employment
Committee; Democratic Assemblyman Dario Frommer of Los Feliz, chair of
the Health Committee, and Democratic Sen. Deborah Ortiz of Sacramento,
who heads the Health and Human Services Committee.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the lobbying is how fast it has
become unremarkable. Little more than a decade ago, appearances by
Meadows, or anyone in the industry, would have been unthinkable
because pornographers were battling a Justice Department crusade
against transporting "obscene" materials across state lines.

Then, in California, the industry caught a break. Harold Freeman, who
was president of Hollywood Video Production Co., contested pandering
charges against him, basing his argument on a 1973 ruling by the U.S.
Supreme Court. In Miller vs. Calfornia, the high court had defined
obscenity as material that depicted sex in a "patently offensive way,"
lacking in literary, artistic, scientific and political merit, and
appealing to an average person's "prurient interest," as determined by
the local standards of each community.

In effect, the court said that if a locality deemed sexual content
sufficiently artistic, it was not obscene.

To the California Supreme Court, ruling in Freeman's case, that
definition meant that an adult filmmaker could hire actors and
actresses to perform sexual acts as long as they were being recorded
on film. In its 1988 decision, the California court said there is no
evidence that Freeman paid the acting fees "for the purpose of sexual
arousal or gratification, his own or the actors'." Instead, he hired
them simply to make a non-obscene movie--an act protected by the First
Amendment.

[Mutt]

Just like that, making porn was legal in California. The industry
exploded, thanks also to the VCR revolution, which made it possible
for people to watch in private rather than at seedy adult theaters.
What's more, anyone could buy a video camera and go into the
filmmaking business. A cottage industry of "amateur" pornographers
cropped up in the San Fernando Valley. They competed against several
major adult studios: VCA Pictures Inc., Wicked Pictures, and Sin City
Films, all in Chatsworth, and Vivid Video Inc. and Evil Angel
Productions in Van Nuys.

Over the years, the companies grew larger--and politically smarter.
They help fund the Free Speech Coalition, a Chatsworth-based national
nonprofit organization that has dues-paying members ranging from Web
site operators to porn actresses to adult cabaret chains. With an
annual budget of $750,000, the coalition's lobbying effort has focused
on protecting free speech and guarding the business interests of the
Triple-X world.

"Our focus is not just about the rights of the adult industry, but the
rights of you as an individual to have choices," says William Lyon,
executive director of the coalition. The organization has opened
offices in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and Washington,
D.C. By next year, the group expects to expand into the South with
five more offices.

Today's pornographers maintain that the adult film industry is no
different from other lucrative businesses based on vice, such as
tobacco and alcohol. Sex is merely a commodity to be sold and branded,
like Microsoft software and Chrysler minivans. "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 and Goldberg signed similar waivers on the movie they shot
together. "I represent that I am in good health, with no known
sexually transmittable diseases. I understand that the benefits of the
workmen's compensation laws do not apply," the waiver said.

Ballowe's lawsuit alleges that Goldberg lied when signing the
document, 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."

Producers, however, do not concede that performers are employees.
Instead, producers claim performers are independent contractors who
are not subject to workers' compensation laws.

Elliott Berkowitz, a Los Angeles workers' compensation attorney who is
representing Ballowe, counters: "They're employees. The companies tell
them when to show up, what to wear, where to go, what acts to do. If
Hollywood studios consider their actors and actresses an employee
during the length of their film shoots, there's no reason why adult
studios should be held to a different standard. They're both making
movies. And I guarantee you, studios like Disney have paid their taxes
and workers' compensation policies."

The issue has yet to be decided by the compensation appeals board. But
if it is, another obstacle awaits Ballowe. Hard Core Television, the
producer of the video, did not have workers' compensation insurance
for any employees. The distributor, K-Beech, had taken out a workers'
compensation policy describing its employees as clerical workers. TIG
Insurance Co., the Texas-based underwriter, insists the policy does
not cover porn stars--and therefore won't cover Ballowe's medical
bills.

Officials with Hard Core Television and K-Beech could not be reached
and attorneys for TIG declined to comment.

Whose job is it to track the san Fernando Valley pornography industry?

There are two leading candidates. One is the L.A. County Health
Department. It relies heavily on state and federal money, but the
federal funds are to end in 2004-2005. "Of course there's concern,"
says Kerndt, the county's STD control director. "We know that if a
disease enters this population, it could rapidly spread." Health
department officials say they don't have enough staff or money to
monitor the industry and point to a budget deficit that, by 2005, is
on track to hit between $350 million and $400 million annually.

The other candidate for oversight is the California Division of
Occupational Safety and Health, whose monitoring effort includes
oversight of Hollywood stunt work but not the porn industry. It is
"too fragmented, too hard to track," says Dean Fryer, a Cal-OSHA
spokesman. "We rely heavily on employees to give us tips about unsafe
working conditions."

Deborah Sanchez, supervising attorney for the Los Angeles City
Attorney's special enforcement unit, is sympathetic to the plight of
porn performers but sees little support from the public. "This reminds
me of all the other types of businesses that have traditionally been
oppressors--the garment industry, for example," Sanchez says. "The
difference is, there are unions for garment workers" these days.

Mainstream Hollywood actors have a union that oversees wages, health
insurance, retirement benefits and residual payments. Screen Actors
Guild officials say they would never allow their members to work on an
adult set.

Some adult-film actors know that they are entitled to employee
protections such as workers' compensation and overtime, but they see
no way performers could organize. "You would have to get every actor
and actress in adult to sign up at the same minute," says an actress
who goes by the stage name Wendy Divine and has worked on Vivid and
K-Beech productions for several years. "Even if that happened, the
studios could easily find replacements. They control everything."

Before Ballowe filed her lawsuit, she and Jade reached out to law
enforcement and other government agencies, asking that they
investigate working conditions in the industry. The first stop, in
1998, was Cal-OSHA. "They told us they didn't track our business,"
Ballowe says, and sent her to the state health department."

The California Department of Health Services, however, doesn't track
their industry. "It's a local issue controlled by the local county
health department," Ballowe says she was told.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, when contacted
by The Times, said the case was a criminal matter, not a public health
issue.

So they went to the Van Nuys office of the Los Angeles Police
Department, where they met with Det. David Escoto, then with the
department's Crimes Against Persons unit. "I told them there was no
way we could prove who did what," recalls Escoto, now in the
department's Foothill office. "I don't know how the industry works.
And I don't think there's a way to prove they all got HIV from the
same person.

No one would believe them anyway."

"That's utter rubbish," counters Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the former UCLA
medical researcher who identified the earliest AIDS cases. "There is a
way to track that information. It just takes money."

Gottlieb pointed to the case of Dr. David Acer, a Florida dentist who
was found to have infected six of his patients with HIV. Federal
epidemiologists used molecular sequencing studies of the viral strains
of the patients to see if there were any similarities in the virus
carried by the seven people.

The results showed that the patients' strain was similar to that of
the dentist--and vastly different from other HIV strains collected
elsewhere in the community.

But there was an important difference with the case of the dentist.
"People cared what happened to those patients," Gottlieb says. "They
were seen as innocent. No one sees porn stars as victims."

Correction. Almost no one. Somewhere in Los Angeles is one office
worker who does care. In the words of an adult-film actress: "I picked
up chlamydia on an Extreme set. I gave it to my boyfriend by accident.
I had no idea that I had it. I didn't have any symptoms."

She learned that she was infected nearly a year later, long after she
and the boyfriend had broken up. By then, he was in another
relationship and had unknowingly infected his new girlfriend. "She had
it, too," says the actress, who agreed to speak only if not
identified. "The girlfriend worked at some insurance company. She's a
secretary."

[quiet]

uh, link?

[Mutt]

what's your problem dipshit?

people can read it here, or is it too confusing for you?


LA Times requires registration, i am doing people a favor.

[Fletch XXX]

Originally posted by Mutt


At the same time, in studios in the San Fernando Valley, scores of
other actors and actresses were working on movies. They put in longhours, commonly without meal breaks. They often worked without cleantoilets, 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.

exactly and you guys never believe the shit i say about cali porn.

the valley is porn capitol and disease capitol.

and we send them to vegas during the conventions to rep companies.


I have seen girls do a shoot, go out that night and fuck a guy in a car, and show up at another shoot with the same PCR DNA test, yet she hasnt been checks since she barebacked some dude in a car the night before.

I wouldnt fuck any stripper or pornstar in LA.

[Mutt]

LA Times is the only newspaper in the country, maybe the world, with a full time reporter on the porn industry. This guy has written some excellent investigative pieces.

[quiet]

ya, thanks.

[Mutt]

i wasn't referring to quiet as 'dipshit', his post snuck in there while i was posting.

actually i don't have the link, i found this on R.A.M.E , the adult video biz newsgroup. That's why the shitty formatting unfortunately.

LA Times does require registration which i hate.

[eRock]

Who were you calling a "dipshit" then if it wasn't Quiet?

[Fletch XXX]

Originally posted by eRock
Who were you calling a "dipshit" then if it wasn't Quiet?

Chong no doubt.

in the name of Chong, the 'man' is on the way.

*kaboom*

[eRock]

Ahhh...I missed Chong's post. Good detective work, Fletch!

[flashfreak]

why should I read so many fucking rows?
waste of time...

[Spoonie Luv]

good read man, disturbing.

[Rilose]

I will tell you guys this ! Girls alone in cali in general are not concious of pretected sex as apposed to people in vancouver where I'm from. Sure some are but when I was in Cali girls NEVER asked if I had condoms. I'd be like, " hold up a sec, gonna grab a condom k" response "uh..ya ok" ! Gross & scary !!!

[diggy]

good read mutt, appreciate the effort...

[UnseenWorld]

At least California has laws. Most states have no legislation whatsoever.

If only the states would agree among themselves and enact universal legislation. Still, I think every activity has risks, and by the way, is anyone putting a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to engage in risky behavior? If so, then it's that person's fault, but otherwise, it's a risk everybody takes every time they have sex, because you can't even be 100% sure your marriage partner is totally faithful.

It's almost better to have no testing, so the smart porn actor will have to assume that the other person is a potential source of disease and make a conscious choice whether or not to assume the risk, than to have a situation giving him/her a false sense of security.

However, in this as in so many other situations, I see the employer being blamed for risks that the employee consciously accepts, and I don't think that's right, unless the employer is actually deceiving the employee.

To me, it's like a guide service. If you run a rock climbing business, and your guides handle groups that want to do climbing without safety ropes and so on and want guides who climb the same way, then as long as this is understood, and despite the fact that it's a business, it's a risk the guides accept. If the guide falls, then I don't see why the company would be responsible for not supplying safety ropes.

I see this as an analogy to the hardcore industry.

[EscortBiz]

great points

[Mr Cheeks]

Originally posted by Fletch XXX


exactly and you guys never believe the shit i say about cali porn.

the valley is porn capitol and disease capitol.

and we send them to vegas during the conventions to rep companies.


I have seen girls do a shoot, go out that night and fuck a guy in a car, and show up at another shoot with the same PCR DNA test, yet she hasnt been checks since she barebacked some dude in a car the night before.

I wouldnt fuck any stripper or pornstar in LA.

agree 100%. there were so many times during shoots when i was so tempted to join in, shoot it POV, or some other shit.. but when i think about them god damn little STDs, i always ended up keeping my dick in my pants.
i still get little BJs here and there, during shoots though.. harmless, i hope

[Matt_WildCash]

Originally posted by Mutt
what's your problem dipshit?

people can read it here, or is it too confusing for you?


LA Times requires registration, i am doing people a favor.

Mutt thanks for the post, I hate those LA times things that require reg and NEVER goto links that have them. Thanks for posting the articule it was an interesting read.

[quiet]

Originally posted by alchemist
[B]

agree 100%. there were so many times during shoots when i was so tempted to join in, shoot it POV, or some other shit.. but when i think about them god damn little STDs, i always ended up keeping my dick in my pants.

very good decision dude.

[x-vision]

Interesting stuff Mutt, thanks for the enlightenment.

[tony286]

I was going to start testing models for a big porn company in Ca. I am having serious second thoughts now. Thanks for the info

[gooeycandy]

mutt, what is this shit??????? a simple url would have sufficed!

why do you never go to the events? are you a paper reader, not a live doer???????????????

[playa]

i seriously don't see a problem with a law saying all porn stars would have to wear a condom,

i could give a shit and can't see why joe blow porn watcher cares either

[zombie]

interesting read

[Hustlin Entertainment]

very interesting

[UnseenWorld]

Originally posted by playa
i seriously don't see a problem with a law saying all porn stars would have to wear a condom,

i could give a shit and can't see why joe blow porn watcher cares either

Well, maybe you're not a messy facial fan or a creampie fan. Actually, it's quite apparent you aren't.

[Nasty D]

Nice work alot of info to think on......

[Cash]

Excellent informative post, Mutt, thanks!
While an HIV test to be required is a good thing to have prior to a shooting, I still don't get it how it could solve the problem. HIV cannot be detected the next day, but after 3-6 months, with an indirect test (of the specific antibodies developped), so a test taken the day before would not prove anything, only that you had not contracted the infection until 3-6 months before.
UnseenWorld is right to say that not presenting any test makes actors/actresses more alert that they face this risk for money.
Not even condoms can fully protect you, since you can get infected in lots of other ways (any direct contact between blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and to a lesser extent breast milk - for those pregnant shots - between 2 people can cause an HIV infection): cum swallowing (even some drops left inside the mouth and not wiped pose a risk), or finger insertion when there may be small leaks of blood around the nails, or oral sex, if you have open sores around your lips or blood from your weak teeth ... It's a high risk biz for the porn actors.

[Paul Markham]

This is the porn industry, we very rarely get good press. Get used to it.

I always remember Linda Lovelace telling the world that she was forced to do deep throat, try it you have to practise very hard to do that.

The thing is models will fuck on camera and off camera. They think they are immune. If HIV was such a problem in the industry models would be dropping like flies by now. They are not.

If you know the risks and still do it you are responsible for your own actions. If you do not know the risk of HIV by now you are stupid and we cannot tailor laws to protect the stupid.