LOS ANGELES – An AIDS charity has filed a lawsuit attempting to force the Los Angeles County health department to mandate condom usage on all porn sets.
Filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the petition seeks a court order “compelling the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to discharge its ministerial and non-discretionary statutory duty to combat an acknowledged epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases stemming from production of hardcore pornography in Los Angeles County.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation initiated the suit after seeing little response to its mid-June demand that state and county legislators enforce condom requirements suggested, but not mandated, by state and local regulations. AHF is a mainstream organization providing medical care and advocacy to more than 100,000 people in 22 countries. The organization claims to be the largest non-profit HIV-AIDS healthcare provider in the U.S., providing more than 14,000 free HIV tests annually.
The organization’s stand on condoms in the adult film industry followed by two weeks the revelation that a female adult industry performer tested positive for HIV but reportedly worked in an explicit production without a current “clean” certificate from Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, the porn industry’s primary health-testing resource. It is unclear why the woman was allowed to work outside accepted industry practices that require a health certificate issued within 30 days of filming. The standard is voluntary.
Shortly thereafter, county health officials released data indicating AIM reported 18 cases of HIV infection and 3,700 instances of Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis among the people it has tested since 2004. Of those, 2,013 infections were Chlamydia and 965 were gonorrhea. The health department did not break down the statistics into “inside the adult industry” and “outside the adult industry,” but AIM does testing for both sectors. AIM has said none of the HIV infections were discovered in “active adult performers.”
The county health department recommends condoms be used during filming of adult movies but does not require their use.
AHF President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Weinstein said his organization filed the lawsuit because officials do not seem to be taking the situation seriously. Health department officials have admitted none of the HIV or other STD infections uncovered by AIM’s tests were investigated.
“The Department of Public Health has a responsibility to try and control the spread of STDs in LA County, particularly in a commercial venue,” Weinstein said during a Friday press conference. “Despite this responsibility, 29 days after an outbreak of a potentially lethal virus — HIV — in the porn industry, the county has not taken a single step to address this serious public health threat. As an HIV and STD medical provider, it is our obligation to pursue county action on this issue, which goes beyond just the recent HIV outbreak and includes an epidemic of thousands of STD cases in the porn industry — an epidemic virtually ignored by the county department of public health. This is not just about one industry but about our entire community, as the spread of disease among performers endangers themselves as well as their sexual partners outside the industry. There is no firewall between porn performers and the general public.”
The health department on Thursday issued a statement reaffirming its commitment to protecting public health.
“The county continues to strongly support state legislation and the regulatory role of Cal/OSHA as the most appropriate means to regulate the practices in the adult film industry that expose performers to unnecessary and preventable occupational risks of acquiring and transmitting these diseases,” the statement noted. “The department does not believe that litigation is the best means to deal with this issue.”
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