The industry justifies barebacking by saying that AIM does such a good job of keeping HIV out of the talent pool and containing the virus if it somehow finds its way in.
Basic biology presents a major challenge for AIM--and porn stars:
The problem is that there's a window of at least several days between being exposed to HIV and testing positive, during which time the patient is highly infectious. So, a patient can test negative during the most infectious phase of their illness. That's what happened in 2004 when porn star Darren James came back from Brazil with a fresh HIV infection. He tested with AIM and was cleared to go back to work. Before his next test, James had unprotected sex with 14 actresses, 3 of whom contracted the virus.
In 2009, an actress worked in the industry with HIV before testing positive. Luckily, she didn't infect any of her partners, but she easily could have.
The safety of actors in the porn industry has strong legal implications:
AIM maintains a database of all performers and the scenes they've done for each company. If a performer later tests positive for HIV, AIM can look up all that actor's partners. AIM then contacts those people, gets a list of their on- and off-camera partners and tests them.
AIM says it "quarantines" actors who may have been exposed, but the group has no legal power. Some studios have shut down during the investigation, but others are still making movies, presumably without condoms.
The industry group refuses to share information with public-health officials out of privacy concerns. And the industry gets away with breaking state laws:
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