The Dailymail.co.uk reports that the porno industry has grind to a halt on Wednesday after an actor tested positive for HIV. The actor’s sex partners are currently being tested, officials didn’t say when the positive test was recorded. The actor is not believed to have been infected on a film set.
This is a serious setback after nearly a dozen performers were infected during a syphilis outbreak last year.
Diane Duke, executive director of the industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition, told The Associated Press in an email:
“The moratorium will be lifted once the risk of transmission has been eliminated,”
Michael Weinstein president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) said in a statement:
“How many adult film performers have to become infected with an array of preventable sexually transmitted diseases — including HIV, which is not curable — before the porn industry actually complies with the law requiring condom use,”
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation successfully lobbied voters last year to adopt an ordinance requiring actors use condoms in the making of most porn films
Assemblyman Isadore Hall III, who is pushing for the state to adopt a similar law, called Wednesday’s news “devastating and preventable.”
“Exposing workers to this type of harm would not be accepted in any other industry in this nation,” the Los Angeles Democrat said.
The industry, which says its audience does not want to see condoms, is fighting the Los Angeles County measure in court.
