Another Positive HIV Test, Another Porn Production Moratorium

According to reports coming out of the adult film industry, a second porn performer has tested positive for HIV, prompting the Free Speech Coalition/PASS, a trade organization for the industry, to call for yet another moratorium on all production until further notice.

On Aug. 22, the FSC confirmed that 28-year-old performer Cameron Bay had tested positive for HIV, and called for a moratorium on new production in immediate response to her diagnosis. The moratorium was lifted six days later on Aug. 28, when, according to the Huffington Post, the industry’s medical advisory council cleared all the performers who’d worked with Bay.

The adult film industry, which has been quite literally chafing under the yoke of California’s recent condoms-in-porn law, seemed to have quelled the crisis caused by Bay’s positive test, but on Tuesday of this week, her boyfriend and fellow performer Rod Daily announced on Twitter that he’d also tested positive for HIV. Though his diagnosis wasn’t confirmed by the FSC and Friday’s call for a another production moratorium didn’t name the second infected performer, industry speculation in the wake of this latest positive test has been pretty frantic. When Daily first tweeted his diagnosis, the FSC initially said that it didn’t have enough information to declare a second moratorium (Daily apparently didn’t inform the coalition of his results), but Daily has worked exclusively in gay pornography since 2010, which had already mandated that condoms be used in all productions. His Twitter announcement laid the gallows humor on pretty thick:

Drumroll please!! I’m 32 years old and I’m HIV positive. Acute HIV, which means I recently was infected. For that I am blessed.

Dr. Sean Darcy, part of the medical advisory council that established the criteria for the moratorium, made it clear in a recent statement that the industry has done its best to responsibly construct a timeline for the recent positive HIV tests:

Because of these precautionary steps, the performer who has now tested positive for HIV, had not performed since BEFORE the first moratorium and was prevented from performing due to the required retest. Therefore, no performers were exposed to a new risk of on-set transmission as a result of this latest case, or Ms. Bay’s infection.

Even with the rapid and diligent work of the medical advisory council, two positive HIV tests in just about two weeks only seems to bolster arguments from the proponents of California’s new condom mandate for the porn industry.