Have you ever been prescribed something like birth control pills or antibiotics and forget to take a pill or two? I mean hell, who hasn’t?
That’s why taking Truvada isn’t the perfect solution and no excuse to allow HIV+ positive performers in the mainstream talent pool. Missing a single dose in a month can reduce the effectiveness of Truvada to about 96%, which means that 1 in 25 can be infected with HIV and that’s just with missing a single dose!
Truvada can also have reduced effectiveness if you drink alcohol, do illicit drugs or hell, even by taking meds that your doctor prescribed you for other medical issues you might have.
Of course, none of that takes into account all the side effects we’ve already discussed.
But that’s not the most pressing issue right now. Some people are swearing up and down that there are possibly 2 different performers who are HIV+ in the PASS system. The FSC says this isn’t the case. But there is a growing number of people who absolutely swear this rumor is true.
What do you think?
Let us know in the comments down below.
4 Responses
Its been a rumor for years that 2 males are HIV+ and hid it with meds.
This rumor has been around for a few years now. But it’s hard to discount it because there was a rumor about a guy who was HepC+ and one that turned out to be true.
In 2013 TTS and CET offered free HepC tests to the standard industry panel at least twice before HepC was ultimately added to the FSC-PASS protocol. This was a good thing it forced performers out of denial and treatment where needed.
Living in the real world I knew as soon as I saw labs adding ‘free’ tests they were stepping up and forcing the industry to recognize the existence of HepC in the performer talent pool. Same shit different risk factor as labs adding chemical analysis assays to telfon plant workers in Appalachia. Dupont wasn’t liable for what they didn’t know about.
The labs didn’t add a ‘free’ 4th gen for shoots n giggles. They have HIV data and already run p24 tests on reactive tests to rule out new infection that hasn’t yet replicated to thousands of copies.
Five years ago I told someone currently at FSC they needed to test gay with industry panel to measure and reduce exposure risk. It was a heated exchange over several days with him offering excuses and me saying point blank excluding gays from testing was discriminatory and adding to the stigma behind every excuse. Now I’m saying they need to offer OPTIONAL 4th gen test reporting to PASS on a voluntary basis in the same spirit PASS was designed.
Performers who want that extra assurance can exclude anyone who doesn’t provide 4th gen data without the assumption that those who don’t offer it or are willing to work with those who don’t provide the 4th gen test are HIV positive. In other words the industry HIV minimum standard remains the same as it has since 2012 with provisions for performers who want a higher standard.
Adding the 4th gen test won’t protect performers or the industry from the risk of a window positive occupational HIV transmission documented by the CDC in 2014 but it may raise more awareness to importance of informed consent and the right to autonomously define where that consent begins and ends.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6505a3.htm
I know of at least one in addition to Nacho there could be more but Ive said for over 2 years that there are at least 2 regular performers