public health officials served a cease and desist order Thursday to the
health clinic that caters to the porn industry, shutting down the
facility to any new testing or procedures.
The order came two days after state health officials
denied the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation’s application
to operate as a community clinic due to what regulators called
“business-related issues.”
porn trade association, said it was her understanding that despite the
order, the clinic, known as AIM, will continue to maintain its database
of test results used by porn producers to check whether performers have
tested negative for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Duke said performers will be tested using “satellite blood draw services.”
“Apparently the big difference is that the main AIM
clinic cannot be utilized. Therefore, I do not believe that their will
be any impairment of production activities,” said Duke.
AIM’s general manager
Miller told AVN, which covers the adult video
industry, that she had only recently been informed of the health
department’s decision and would be contacting authorities immediately
to get the situation “straightened out.”
Among issues, said
spokesman for the California Department of Public Health, was the
clinic’s lack of a required agreement with a hospital where they could
transfer patients as needed.
“AIM has been working on that,” Lundeen said, noting
that AIM officials had been in contact with his office Thursday and
provided additional information required for their license application
to be approved.
Lundeen said it was unclear how soon clinic officials could submit a new license application.
“We’re open to continuing to work with them,” he
said, but for clinic patients, “In the immediate future, they will need
to seek services somewhere else.”
AIM opened in 1998. Lundeen said state officials were alerted that the clinic, located in
County public health officials also did not become
aware that the clinic was operating without a license until April,
according to Dr.
public health director. In May, county officials sent AIM a letter
advising them that as a nonprofit, they could not operate under an
affiliated physician’s license and needed to apply instead for a clinic
license, Fielding said.
The clinic’s closure came days after HIV-positive porn performer
who worked in both gay and straight productions, spoke out for the
first time about his diagnosis in October. Burts, 24, has criticized
AIM for what he has said was poor follow-up care and is calling for
mandatory HIV testing and condom use in both the gay and straight adult
film industries. His positive test result led to the shutdown of
filming at several major straight porn production companies until
performers who had worked with him tested HIV-negative.
“While L.A. County finally doing something by
closing AIM is a good thing, we’ll see if they have the backbone to
shut down productions,” said AIDS Healthcare Foundation President
a longtime critic of AIM, who renewed his call for public health
authorities to shut down productions that do not require condoms.
Fielding said it was up to the state to enforce
workplace protections for adult film performers, but urged porn
producers not to rely on testing alone for protection.
“They need to use condoms so that these workers will
not be put in a position where they are exposed to potentially life
threatening diseases,” Fielding said.
issued a statement Thursday saying he had faith in AIM and its testing
system. Hirsch has spoken out in the past against efforts to require
condom use in porn.
“We have been in contact with AIM and believe that
the current situation is temporary and will be quickly remedied,”
Hirsch said. “There are other alternatives that we can utilize in the
meantime and will do so. We believe the current system of testing
works. Our productions will proceed as scheduled.”
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