Porn Valley- In a meeting where there was more press than porn stars, [or so it would seem with newcomers and agents mixed in the group] AIM's Sharon Mitchell and members of her staff were on hand to answer questions regarding the industry's HIV outbreak this past April. It was the industry's opportunity to ask whatever it had on its mind. IQ jokes aside, sadly, very few took the opportunity. And it was probably the most enlightening session to date for anyone who cared. But who would? Everyone's working now, so no one gives a shit, right?
Mitchell, obliging, gracious and very forthcoming, said something to the effect that a similar meeting she attended weeks ago [press excluded] was poorly organized. I'm wondering how she'd rate this one on a scale of one to ten. Nonetheless, Mitchell's all for the performers annointing a core group to sit down with AIM and hammer out constructive policies. "AIM is amenable to whatever the talent wants to do," Mitchell said. "AIM is here to enforce what the [adult] community collectively wants to do."
Which has yet to happen even though that was the chief idea coming out of the first sit-down Mr. Marcus organized at the beginning of the outbreak. Marcus, again, chaired last night's meeting and made a statement about his instincts being that things aren't going to happen over night. Sorry, Marcus, but at the pace things are moving no one in that room from last night's going to be around for the next glacier age.
Mitchell also said she thought a "guild" was a good idea. You noticed that no one was calling the union the union any more.They're calling it a guild. And Mitchell, of the opinion that most female performers are "transients" anyway, said it's all on the shoulders of the male performers to succeed in forming one. "They're the ones doing it day-in and day-out," she said. "If the guys were to stand together..."
On the other hand, Mitchell's contemporary, Ron Jeremy feels just the opposite, that a "guild" can't happen http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=4259
Mitchell, noting that some non-condom companies were footing the bill for talent to test every two weeks, wondered aloud whether two-week testing actually made sense. Especially in light of the fact that one of the female performers tested positive in a 17-day window. Someone suggested splitting the difference, going for three weeks. "We need a realistic window period we can work with," Mitchell added.
Regardless, the one common denominator in the outbreak, accoring to Mitchell, was unprotected anal sex and that the virus detected was not an American subtype, that it was out of the country. "It's so unpredictable," she said. So unpredictable, that Ms. Arroyo had to test twice to show a positive. Mitchell pointed out that Darren James was testing every three weeks, and even with that, the industry was lucky to have detected his condition the way it did, that there could have been a virtual shut down.
It didn't take a genius to figure where this was headed, that Brazil was being named the culprit. Although Mitchell concedes that, from talking to officials down there, Brazil seems to exercise pretty tight control of their HIV problem but for the fact that the gringo porn dollar is apparently bribing talent down there to work without bags. Mitchell also noted that James' immune system had been compromised by a spider bite.
Mitchell said James, in Brazil, worked with Bianca Biaggi, an HIV positve performer and a heroin addict who lived with trannies. According to Mitchell, all kinds of rumors have been circulating about Biaggi but the most disturbing are the ones that she had tested positive prior to her working with James but that her agent suppressed the information and James was presented with an older test.
That being said, I still had to ask Mitchell THE question. About Lara Roxx working with Darren James in Montreal in February. Mitchell, reacting like she heard this information for the first time, really couldn't summon facts on this one. One of her staff people said, yeah, Roxx worked with James on the 20th of February. Which contradicted some press accounts that Roxx worked with James on the 27th. I was curious exactly what test Roxx was using. It certainly wasn't an AIM one. Mitchell agreed on that one. But she also claims Roxx subsequently tested negative in March with an AIM PCR-DNA. Mitchell also said, regardless of what was being reported [she alluded to an interview that was posted on adultfyi.com], it was the best one commercially available. AIM's lab rep also concurred on that point. Marcus said he puts a lot of faith in that test.
Travelers and transients are considered the industry's main problem and it was noted that as many as 1 or 2 HIV positives are detected a month among people attempting to get into the business. "It's like clockwork," said the lab rep. And, among the adult community, at least 15 false positives are generated a month.
Mitchell also took issue with a notion put forth in a May meeting by Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of the STD program for L.A. County. At that meeting Dr. Kerndt said under certain circumstances, false negatives would result if blood wasn't processed within six hours or properly refrigerated. http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=3738
Mitchell said untrue, that PCR-DNA allows for a five day maximum of blood at room temperature. "But it must be at room temperature," she stressed. It was also pointed out that if a specimen is tainted, the lab results will pick it up immediately and mark the specimen unsuitable for testing.
That being said, according to Mitchell, some talent agents such as Mark Spiegler are making arrangements for European doctors to send over blood samples of performers, allowing for, of course, a strict procedure of chain of custory requiements accompanying it.. Arrangements have also been made between AIM and FED EX so that those samples wouldn't get held up in customs.
Mitchell said that AIM is also firmly entrenched with Adultdat, criticizing both the HEARD and HALO systems as invasive from privacy issue standpoints. "If we don't use Adultdat we're screwed," Mitchell said. It was noted that the Adultdat system can spit out a quarantine list in seconds as opposed to countless man hours to assemble similar information. Again, Mitchell concedes that any system is only as good as the accuracy of the information being fed into it.
Compounding some of AIM's problems and its ability to update its own site during the crisis were the hours of bullshit phone calls and rumors it had to weather, thus often leading it down a primrose path of phony leads. AIM said it had to field as many as 1100 phone calls a day during a three-week stretch of the crisis; and that of the 53 names on the quarantine list, 19 performers had supplied phony phone numbers. In one instance AIM was given the phone number of a McDonald's.
Certainly an eyebrow raiser was also the report that one video company stated it hoped that, if they shot a new girl, she'd get beat up and die on her way home so that her scene would make them more money.
