I know, it seems like a strange cause to take up.
But the fact is, being a porn actor puts one at huge risk for STIs including HIV. I wish I had a good and shocking comparison, along the lines of, "being an average porn star for one year is equivalent to riding a motorcycle on a crowded indie speedway without a helmet for a month without stopping", but I don't have any statistics. (And someone should really look into calculating that risk!)
You get the idea, though; being in pornography with the very limited regulation currently in effect is running a huge health risk, and no one should be required to do that to keep his or her job. The recent revelation that a porn actress had tested positive for HIV and possibly infected a costar and her boyfriend prompted the apparently hushed-up fact that several others in the industry have become infected with HIV in the last 5 years. Thousands have tested positive for Gonorrhea and Chlamydia.
The heterosexual porn industry has rejected suggestions that regulation include mandatory condom use, and actors who demand condom use are often not asked back for further work. (Meanwhile, because HIV is so prevalent in the gay community, gay porn studios generally require condom use.) The current regulation around safety in the industry is that actors must arrive on set with the results of an HIV PCR test. However, HIV testing is not flawless, as a cluster of cases in the porn industry in 2004 showed; further, requiring that actors pay for testing on their own, and dismissing anyone who is HIV-positive, is illegal.
As this article (which you can download for free! I love Plos Medicine!) argues, regulation of the porn industry must involve condoms, which will lower risk of STIs and HIV significantly -- and carry the added bonus of normalizing condom use for viewers. The industry apparently thinks that people will stop watching porn if actors are wearing condoms, something that hasn't played out in the gay porn industry. State regulators need to show some backbone and stand up to the industry in order to protect porn actors and their partners.
(On a side note: is this blog getting too soapboxy? I figured that if there was anyone reading this blog, a good use of it might be to write persuasive arguments about issues arising in medicine and public health... but if no one reads it because it's too preachy, it defeats itself.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Porn is supposedly lucrative. So if an actor or actress contracts HIV on the job, I hypothesize that he or she should easily be able to find a personal injury lawyer willing to sue the rich porn producer for very large damages (actual damages start with a lifetime of HIV medications and permanently lost wages from not being able to work in porn anymore). The threat of such expensive personal injury lawsuits should be inducing porn producers to take measures to prevent HIV.
This hypothesis can be tested by looking to see if large damages or settlements actually were awarded after the 2004 outbreak. If not, why not?
I don't mind the soapboxy blog, though if you want to actually change things, I doubt a blog by itself will accomplish much. It's a good way of organizing your thoughts.
Post a Comment