The anonymous adult-film star's infection is the first such case in over a year; the news has shut down both Vivid and Wicked's studios. Two more performers are currently being tested. Are stricter condom regulations forthcoming?
The anonymous adult-film star's infection is the first such case in over a year; the news has shut down both Vivid and Wicked's studios. Two more performers are currently being tested. Are stricter condom regulations forthcoming?
DISCUSSION
What people always miss in these scares is that they are a good thing in the sense that it means that the porn industry really is being consistent with testing and is honestly willing to shut down production whenever anyone tests positive.
The fact that this is news is because positive tests are so ridiculously rare. In fact HIV and other STD rates are lower among people in the porn industry than they are in the general population.
Even if performers used condoms for every scene possible there would still be an occasional positive HIV test simply because performers have sex outside of work as well as on camera.
That said, almost every case of on set transmission can be traced to anal creampie shots, which I've never understood because anal creampies are so fucking easy to fake.
What's also interesting about this is that the initial vector performer in this case is a guy who primarily performs in gay porn but has done some straight for pay porn shoots.
Gay to straight porn crossovers are fairly new and started happening because all the marketing studies we did said that female consumers wanted the gay performs in their straight porn (mostly because they are better looking).
The industry resisted this for a while because they were worried about crossover - i.e. during the last scare only the straight industry had to shut down, now both the gay and straight ends will have to close for a while.
I wonder if that means that pay for straight porn will disappear if the industry decides that the risk of a shutdown of both revenue channels simultaneously is too great.