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