Aim has made claims that the positives that the L.A. Health Department reported were not active performers, and the county actually responded that they didn’t know if they were or not, AIM even rattled it’s saber about suing….BAD MOVE.
IN a surprise inspection Wednesday state inspectors and OSHA notified AIM that they would be issuing a subpeona for those records. From KTLA:
LOS ANGELES — State health inspectors on Wednesday paid a surprise visit to the Los Angeles clinic where a female adult film actress recently tested positive for HIV.
State inspectors who visited the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in the San Fernando Valley said the staff was cooperative.
The inspectors did a walk-around, but no documents have been exchanged yet.
A spokesman for the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health says they plan to issue subpoenas this week to access patient records.
AIDS prevention advocates and Los Angeles County public health officials have said the clinic is protecting the pornography industry by withholding the name of the production company that filmed the performer without a clean test.
The state also wants information about 18 other HIV cases reported by the clinic since 2004.
Health officials said they were unaware of these cases until recent reports came out.
The visit Wednesday follows on the heels of the disclosure of 16 previously unpublicized cases of HIV that had been confirmed in adult film industry performers since 2004 when an outbreak shut down porn production for a month.
The newly released data from the L.A. County Health Dept. raises the number of known HIV cases in adult film performers to 22 since 2004, including a porn actress who tested positive late last week.
At least 10 of those cases involved men who had sex with other men, according to health officials.
Officials from the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation have released few details about the most recent case.
The actress tested for HIV on June 4 and the first positive result was returned Saturday, according to a statement from AIM founder Sharon Mitchell on her clinic’s website.
The woman had last tested negative for HIV on April 29, Mitchell said.
Three others with connections to the woman have so far tested negative for HIV, according to the statement, including two men described as “industry partners.”
Mitchell told AVN, an adult industry website, that the clinic had recently changed its policies on disclosure of new cases. “What we do is just handle everything privately unless there’s a widespread problem,” she said.
The performer has not been identified due to privacy issues, but she works very infrequently, according to officials at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation.
Initial HIV tests of the woman’s partners have all been negative, according to the clinic.
Those partners are not being allowed to perform right now, and have been encouraged to get re-tested in two weeks.
In 2004, an HIV outbreak shut down the Southern California porn industry for four weeks.
Dozens of adult entertainment companies halted production temporarily after actor Darren James tested positive for HIV.
James had been working in Brazil before testing positive. He spread the virus to three actresses who worked with him.
Some 50 people were quarantined because of possible exposure.
