Spreading the Disease

Now, legal compliance and AIM all sound well and good, but consider this: in 2004, despite screening procedures in place, an HIV scare forced the adult film business to shut down briefly. Never mind that some 22 adult actors have gotten HIV on the job since 2004, and that STD infection is widespread throughout the industry. More recently, ex-actresses vowed to sue AIM itself for breach of medical data. Clearly, this is an organization that even if it had the well-being of its target demographic in mind, isnt very good at safeguarding it. For the adult industry to point to it as proof that its own practices are copacetic is a bit like a drug pusher pointing out that he donated money to a clean needle outreach program.

Unfortunately, porn is never going to go away. Not in this country, at least. And as long as it exists, there are going to be desperate, misguided people who will put themselves at risk working in this degrading line of work. Nobody stays in porn forever; they either become so drug-addled and broken they sink even further, or they decide they can no longer live with what they do for a living, and they leave the industry behind, eager to do just about anything else to make a living. What these survivors carry with them, however, is a risk of STD infection some ten times that of regular people. Health insurers, as you well know, do a pretty good job of screening for diseases such as HIV and AIDS because the most primitive underwriting reflex demands it. So perhaps whats going on in California isnt a clear and present danger to the health insurance industry. But its a bad thing for society at large. Maybe if a prominent health insurance executive or trade group came forth and simply commented on the uninsurability of diseased porn stars, people might think of this whole seamy industry less as a victimless endeavor and more as the ongoing travesty of health and the human condition that it really is.