AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) will host a media availability today, Thursday, March 11th to discuss its filing of an appeal in its lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) to require condom use or other reasonable steps to protect actors in the production of pornography in Los Angeles County. AHF filed the appeal with the California Second Appellate District (Appellate Case No: pending) Thursday morning.
“…arbitrarily failed to meet its statutory duties…”
AHF’s lawsuit, which was first filed in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles (Case No.: BS121665), in July 2009, sought a Writ of Mandate “compelling the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to discharge its ministerial and non-discretionary statutory duty to combat an acknowledged epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases stemming from production of hardcore pornography in Los Angeles County.” The suit was subsequently dismissed in late December.
AHF had filed the lawsuit after exhausting all other methods to compel the County to fulfill its obligation to protect the public’s health in the wake of the revelation last June that an actress working in the adult film business had tested positive for HIV. At that time, AHF had urged the County to better monitor HIV and STD prevention in the region’s adult film industry—and require condom use—or to shut down porn sets.
“We are appealing the dismissal of this lawsuit in order to continue to try to compel the Department of Public Health to fulfill its responsibility to try and control the spread of STDs in LA County—particularly in a commercial venue. Despite the responsibility of this public trust, and a full eight months after an outbreak of a potentially lethal virus—HIV—in the porn industry, the County has simply not taken the steps necessary to address this serious public health threat,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “As an HIV and STD medical provider, it is our obligation to pursue County action on this issue, which goes beyond just the recent HIV outbreak and includes an epidemic of thousands of STD cases in the porn industry—an epidemic virtually ignored by the County Dept. of Public Health.”
Since the June 2009 reporting of the latest HIV outbreak—and the subsequent report by the LA Times that as many as 22 porn performers may have tested positive over the last five years—no action has been taken by the County to halt the spread of STDs on LA porn sets or to conduct the proper and legally required public health follow-up with those thought to be infected.
The fact that the DPH is aware of the ongoing pervasive sexually transmitted disease crisis in LA’s pornography industry is well documented. DPH has cited numerous figures confirming an STD epidemic among performers in adult films, including the fact that performers in hardcore pornography are ten times more likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease than members of the population at large.
According to figures cited by DPH, there were 2,013 documented cases of Chlamydia among LA porn performers between 2003 and 2007. In the same period, 965 cases of gonorrhea were documented. Many performers suffer multiple infections. In the period April 2004 to March 2008 there have been 2,847 STD infections diagnosed among 1,884 performers in the hardcore industry in LA County. DPH attributes the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry to a lack of protective equipment for partners, including condoms. The agency recommends condoms be used during production, but has never taken steps to ensure their use, or to protect the performers who are essentially required to endanger their health in order to remain employed.