Porn film production suspended after Cameron Bay tests positive for HIV
Los Angeles' adult film industry announces moratorium on new movies after actor's diagnosis, although infection believed not to have happened on set
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Your support makes all the difference.The adult film industry on the US west coast has put film production on hold after a performer tested positive for HIV.
The performer's name was originally withheld, but then Cameron Bay, a female performer who has worked in the industry since 2010 to say it was her. The positive result has not been confirmed.
The actor's sex partners are currently being tested by doctors with Adult Production Health and Safety Services, which works with the porn industry.
"The moratorium will be lifted once the risk of transmission has been eliminated," Diane Duke, executive director of the industry trade group the Free Speech Association, said.
She added that the actor is not believed to have been infected on a film set.
Speaking to Adult Video News, Bay said: "When I got the call, I was obviously extremely distraught and in disbelief because there's no way that it's possible in my eyes.
"I don't sleep around, I don't do anything crazy, and I keep track of the people that I've worked with."
She continued, "If it is [positive] I will of course do everything I can to spread awareness and take care of myself and do the things that are necessary or in my power to do. But it is unconfirmed.
"They're doing more tests, and when I spoke with the doctor, I asked him, 'Is it absolutely, positively HIV?' and he said, 'No, there's a possibility it's not, because there's no such thing as an actual HIV test, they just search for the antibodies that they associate with HIV.'"
This is not the first time the industry has had to declare a moratorium. Last year one was declared after nearly a dozen performers were infected during a syphilis outbreak.
Michael Weinstein, the founder of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which successfully lobbied LA voters to support a regulation requiring performers to use a condom when making films in the city, urged actors to follow the ordinance.
"How many adult film performers have to become infected with an array of preventable sexually transmitted diseases - including HIV, which is not curable - before the porn industry actually complies with the law requiring condom use," he said in a statement.
The industry, which says its viewers do not want to see condoms, is fighting the Los Angeles County measure in court.
After a federal judge ruled last week that the measure was constitutional, industry members said they would appeal.
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