LOS ANGELES, CA — Spurred by what it views as a lack of cooperation from the adult film industry’s primary health-testing clinic, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) intends to ask a judge to order Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation to open its patient records for inspection by state investigators.County and state health and safety authorities have been at odds with AIM for about a week, after an adult performer tested positive for HIV infection and reportedly worked without a current “clean” certificate from AIM, in violation of established industry standards and practices. Cal/OSHA seeks information about the performer, her sexual partners and the studio involved, as well as about another 18 HIV infections the Los Angeles County Health Department says AIM uncovered during the past five years.
Although L.A. County initially claimed the 18 HIV-positive individuals were adult-industry workers, on Tuesday county health officials admitted the patients may have been unrelated to the industry. A spokesman told The Los Angeles Times county authorities did not investigate the infections and had no information about the patients, their partners or possible transmission vectors.
AIM co-founder and former porn star Sharon Mitchell has said all 18 cases arose outside the industry, in members of the general public or aspiring adult performers who were denied employment after they tested positive.
State health and safety inspectors made a surprise visit to AIM’s Sherman Oaks clinic on Wednesday. They walked through the facility and interviewed staff members, but they were not allowed to inspect patient health records, according to a late-Wednesday report on The Times’ blog.
“The response [from AIM] was fairly good,” Amy Martin, special counsel to Cal/OSHA, told The Times. “[AIM management] allowed our people to do a walk-around. They allowed them to speak to employees. There was no exchange of documents yet. There will be in the future, and we’ll see how that goes.”
A Cal/OSHA spokesman said the agency wants to examine AIM’s records as part of its mission to protect public health. For several years, Cal/OSHA, Los Angeles county officials and mainstream public-health charities have advocated legislation mandating condom usage in all adult movies.
“We were unaware of all of these cases until recent reports came out,” Dean Fryer, a spokesman for Cal/OSHA, told The Times. “That’s why we wanted to get into the clinic. We wanted to interview staff that work there. We wanted to look at records. We want to understand this.”
According to AIM, the most recent previous HIV-positive test results among porn performers occurred in 2004 and resulted in a voluntary month-long shutdown of all adult filming. Although state and county authorities have accused AIM of protecting the industry in the current case, Mitchell has said the amount of information the non-profit clinic may release to outsiders is limited by federal law guaranteeing patient privacy rights.
