from www.slate.com – Few perishable items have had as unlikely a second act as the humble condom.

For decades, it lurked in the shadows with girlie magazines, aphrodisiac powders, and oddball sex devices. Then in the 1980s, AIDS hit and condoms suddenly entered the fast lane. In 1987 alone, right after Surgeon General C. Everett Koop started the pitch for condom use, sales rose 20 percent nationwide and have increased steadily ever since.

The key to our HIV global control strategy rests not on vaccines, pills, or saltpeter but rather on the surprisingly broad shoulders of our old friend the rubber.

Indeed, so central is its perceived public health role that recently a serious debate has emerged in California over whether to dispatch the condom into a previously latex-free zone: hard-core pornography.

Twenty-two cases of HIV in porn actors have been discovered in the last six years; that, plus a high-profile, though limited outbreak in 2004, piqued such concern that California’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a branch of the Department of Labor, is now formally hearing a request from an AIDS advocacy group to require porn actors to suit up before copulating.

The concern is that the absence of condoms places porn workers at undo risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The activists propose government-mandated protection (e.g., condoms) just as safety regulations were enacted in previous generations for those workers stationed at assembly lines or picking grapes.

Naysayers argue that it is beyond the reach of government to dictate who wears what when consenting adults go about their business in front of cameras and crew—plus there is a less-emphasized but probably critical concern that the presence of condoms may chill porn’s “sizzle.”

Furthermore, they point out that the porn industry encourages actors to submit to regular HIV tests and exams, though many doubt the industry’s sincerity. The problem, however, is that HIV tests in newly infected (and contagious) people may come up negative for the first days or even weeks after infection—a phenomenon referred to as the “window period.”

The 2004 outbreak investigated by the CDC was attributed to this route of transmission, demonstrating that screening itself, even if carried out diligently—which is debatable—may fail to prevent spread.