LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A veteran porn actress on Wednesday became the fifth adult film performer in Los Angeles to test positive for HIV since an industrywide quarantine went into effect last month to stop the spread of the potentially deadly virus, an industry health care official said.
The actress was one of 14 performers who worked directly with actor Darren James, a longtime porn performer who is believed to be the source of the outbreak.
The latest diagnosis marks the largest outbreak of the AIDS virus in Southern California’s porn industry in six years.
The AIDS scare has prompted a virtual shutdown of adult film production in recent weeks and raised the prospect of tighter regulation on an industry, which has long thrived on Hollywood’s fringes in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
James may have contracted the virus while filming in Brazil on a “non-condom” set in March and has passed it to at least three of his co-stars, said Sharon Mitchell, who runs the HIV screening program for the Adult Industry Medical Foundation.
The woman’s name was not made public but Mitchell described her as “an actress working in the industry for several years.”
“She had a good head on shoulders and was well prepared for this diagnosis,” said Mitchell, a former porn actress with a doctorate in public health. “She did realize that HIV was an occupational hazard.”
The woman was one of about 50 porn actors under a 60-day quarantine because they had worked directly with James or with the women who had onscreen sex with him after his suspected exposure to the HIV virus.
The partners of the latest actress to test HIV-positive have already tested negative once, but will be monitored for another 30 days to ensure that they are not carrying the disease, Mitchell said.
“This is the benefit of containment,” Mitchell said. “They haven’t been out working. They have been under quarantine.”
In an unrelated case, a transsexual porn actress whose stage name is Jennifer tested positive for HIV on Tuesday. Her only two partners returned negative tests on Wednesday, indicating the virus had spread no further, Mitchell said.
Mitchell has advocated a moratorium on filming until the quarantine is lifted on June 8 but not all of the 200 or so production companies that comprise the multibillion-dollar industry have complied.
She said the last major outbreak of AIDS in the industry, which employs about 1,200 actors, occurred in 1998 when six people tested positive for HIV. There was an additional case the following year and none since then until James tested positive for the virus in mid-April.
The latest HIV outbreak prompted calls for unprecedented inspection of film shoots and mandatory condom use — proposals that critics said would drive the industry underground or out of state.