Lobster-dog-Haz-Mat-Suit

I know some of you might be wondering why I’m covering porn and not non-porn entertainment right now, but you know what they say about AIDS stories — if it bleeds, it leads.  Turns out the performer who tested positive for HIV a while back has gone public, and now he’s calling for condom use to be mandatory in adult film.  Oh sure, easy for you to say, Rockefeller, next you’ll be telling me to always use brand new heroin needles.

Derrick Burts, 24, said he tested HIV-positive in October at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks after working in both gay and straight porn films for a few months. He had previously been identified only as Patient Zeta.

Screen name: Patient Zeta-Jones.

Burts, who performed in straight films as “Cameron Reid” and gay films as “Derek Chambers,” said he was tested at the clinic Oct. 8, then received a panicked call from clinic staff the following afternoon, summoning him to the office.

When he got there, he said, clinic staff told him that he had tested HIV-positive. They wanted to perform a follow-up test and begin notifying performers he had worked with since his last negative test result Sept. 3. Those performers would be placed on a quarantine list while they were tested. The clinic has since said that none of the performers on its quarantine list tested positive. Burts confirmed that his girlfriend [also in porn] tested negative.

He said that when he returned to the clinic Oct. 23 to review the second test results, clinic staff told him that they had traced his HIV infection to someone he had performed a scene with whom they described to him as a “known positive.”

Was it Danny Masterson?  I bet it was Danny Masterson.

Burts said he asked who the performer was and clinic staff told him they could not reveal the performer’s name or gender due to patient confidentiality.
Contrary to Burts’ account of what he was told, clinic officials released a statement last month saying “Patient Zeta acquired the virus through private, personal activity.”

“That’s completely false,” Burts said Tuesday. “There is no possible way. The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend.”

Burts says he may have contracted the disease during a gay porn shoot in Florida. He said the performers used condoms during intercourse but not during oral sex.

“AIM [Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation] likes to state that testing is enough. That’s completely false,” he said, noting that in the months before he tested positive for HIV, he had also contracted chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes.

“It’s very dangerous,” he said of adult film work. “It should be required that you wear a condom on the set.”

Burts, who grew up in Whittier and Hemet, graduated from Hemet High School and a hotel management school in Florida and worked as a hotel manager and cruise ship magician before becoming a porn performer for the money. He said he earned $200 to $800 for filming a straight scene and $1,000 to $2,000 for a gay scene.

Looking back, he said he wishes he had known more about the risks of contracting sexually transmitted diseases in the industry. “Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn’t worth your life,” he said. “Performers need to be educated.”

Although straight porn performers must show negative HIV test results before filming, the gay porn industry does not have the same restrictions, although condom use is typically required [it's either required or it's not, there's no "typically" required -ed.]. [LATimes]

Let me get this straight: You think you got the virus on a gay porn shoot in which you used a condom, and your solution to this problem is to require condoms in straight porn?  *I* was thinking — and this is gonna sound crazy — maybe we could start requiring gay porn actors to have up-to-date HIV tests before they have unprotected sex together.  I know it sounds like a long shot, but it just might work.