Porn Valley- AIM’s Sharon Mitchell this morning confirmed the HIV positive status of male performer Darren James.

Mitchell said James was confirmed positive this morning for HIV by PCR-DNA. Mitchell said the RNA viral load is pending. “We expect that soon.” Mitchell noted that James has been very cooperative. “He’s not done anything maliciously,” she said. “It’s just that the diagnosis has befallen him.” According to Mitchell the date of James’ last negative test was March 17 and before that was February 25. Mitchell said James had a pattern of testing every three weeks for the seven years that he’s been performing in the industry.

Between February 25 and March 17, James went to Brazil, said Mitchell. “Darren suffered a very bad spider bite that may have masked some of the initial flu-like HIV symptoms. “He mignt not have known if he was getting a reaction from the spider bite. Without the viral load testing, that’s also something that is interefering with me judging exactly when this might have hit.” In between that time, Mitchell said she’s had telephone calls with the company James works for, namely T.T. Boy. “They’ve been very cooperative and have released some names of two women that Darren worked with.”

Mitchell said James, in the last week, has also worked for another producer, Lee Goodwin. “We’re contacting him right now and getting names.” Mitchell is also contacting another producer, Mark Anthony. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got all the names there. But as we get all the performer names I’ll look them up in the data base for the date of their last test, the date they worked with him [James] and we’ll count back of quarantine.”

Mitchell said the RNA viral load is very significant in the investigation. “It really aids us in letting us know when the infection took place. It’s rather telling because the HIV virus, the nature of it is such that the viral load surges in the first 18 to 30 days with a new infection. It’s typically highest then and is never that high again until you expire.” Mitchell said by looking at that and the days of the last negative test they can roughly judge a nice window period of when the infection took place. “It gives us a clearer picture on our partner list and of how long we should keep them in quarantine.”

Mitchell said there’s no chance of a false positive in this instance.

“I ran this over and over again. It’s been twice confirmed by PCR-DNA. And I took a Western Blot sample yesterday for antibody confirmation. That’s pending but I have to make an announcement and keep the community-at-large safe. The RNA is in the hopper right now. That should be in a couple of days but that’s pending, too. Everything is pointing to this being confirmatory.” Mitchell said there’s an outside chance that she’s wrong but she doubts it.

According to Mitchell, AIM will pick up the costs of any further holisitc or medical treatment for James and treatment will be provided by either AIM or one of its affiliate non-profit groups.