HIV-Positive Porn Actor Calls for Mandatory Condom Use

Derrick Burts, a 24-year-old adult film performer who tested HIV-positive at a San Fernando Valley clinic in October, is calling for mandatory condom use on porn sets, improved sex disease tests, and follow-up care for other porn actors.

Burts was scheduled to appear at a news conference at the Sunset Boulevard headquarters of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which over the past four years has called for safety reforms in the adult film industry, including use of condoms in all adult film productions.

During his brief time working in the adult film industry, Burts also contracted herpes, gonorrhea and chlamydia, according to a statement from the foundation.

Burts says he tested positive at the Adult Industry Medical (AIM) Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks in October, then waited in vain more than six weeks for AIM and its medical consultant, Dr. Aaron Aronow, to refer and link him with a doctor or other health care provider for follow up medical care and treatment.

Frustrated and concerned for his health, Burts then consulted a friend outside California who referred him to the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's network of healthcare centers in Southern California, which provide HIV-AIDS medical care regardless of a patient's ability to pay.

Burts then anonymously sought medical treatment for his HIV through the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which arranged a medical appointment for him within 24 hours of his first contact at one of its Los Angeles-area centers, without anyone there knowing his role in the adult film industry.

Until now publicly identified only "Patient Zeta," Burts spoke to the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday about how he learned he was HIV-positive after working in both gay and straight porn films for a few months.

Burts when to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks on Oct. 8 and got tested, and the next day he received a panicked phone call from clinic staff, who summoned him to the office, according to The Times.

When Burts arrived at the clinic, staff there told him he had tested HIV-positive and they wanted to perform a follow-up test. They also wanted to start notifying performers he had worked with since his last negative test result on Sept. 3, The Times reported.

Those performers, Burts was told, would be placed on a quarantine list while they were tested.

Burts said he gave clinic staff names of about a dozen performers he had worked with in California and Florida in both gay and straight productions. The list included his girlfriend, who also works in the industry as a performer. He watched as clinic staff began scanning a performer database, notifying those he had named and placing them on a quarantine list.

The clinic has said none of the performers on its quarantine list tested positive. Burts confirmed that his girlfriend tested negative.

Burts said when he returned to the clinic Oct. 23 to review the second test results, clinic staff told him they had traced his HIV infection to someone he had performed a scene with whom they described to him as a "known positive," according to The Times.

Straight porn performers must show negative HIV test results before filming, but the gay porn industry does not have the same restrictions, although condom use is typically required, according to The Times.

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.

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

But 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 told The Times on Tuesday. "There is no possible way. The only person I had sex with in my personal life was my girlfriend."

Before he left the clinic Oct. 23, Burts said clinic staff put him in touch with a doctor affiliated with the clinic and promised to arrange for his follow-up care.

But Burts said no one followed up, and he felt neglected.

Burts said AIM staff warned him not to contact the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, whose officials have been among the clinic's chief critics. In frustration, Burts said he went anyway and never gave his identity.

Pleased with the care he received at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Burts contacted the group's leaders last week, and identified himself as Patient Zeta, The Times reported.

Burts told people at the foundation he wanted to speak out on their behalf, and in favor of enforcing mandatory condom use in porn productions.