-- Modified on 4/29/2004 10:07:04 PM

You are correct. The virus is very deadly. I have several relatives who have expired from Hiv. On the other site some folks are having a 60 day moratorium in terms of seeing any providers.

People made fun of folks being alarmist, but now is the time to be careful. Remember HIV has mutated and some strains are drug resistant now.

What is scary is to see how fast the infection has spread.

I am seeing signs that people are cutting back on this hobby because of the scare. Lower prices are not worth it to put your health/life in jeapoardy.

I'm restricting myself to massage until June.

I have been in the business for MANY years and have NEVER caught ANYTHING! Let's not be so quick to judge! Condoms do work IF YOU use them! Take it from A WHORE WHO KNOWS! ALWAYS play safe!

-- Modified on 4/30/2004 1:21:27 AM

-- Modified on 4/30/2004 2:00:29 AM

See the link for a study of HIV infectivity with and without condom use. This is the best study of which I am aware. (There aren't many. As Far_Side said in a post below, "Because epidemiologic studies suffer from selection bias, randomized trials remain the standard for assessing efficacy.  However, randomized trials of condoms would not be considered ethical and would never get past ethics review." I suspect this study could not have been done in this country even though it isn't a truly randomized double blind study.)

For those who don't want to plough though the entire report the most important sentence is probably the following.

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The investigators observed a seroconversion rate of 1.0 per 100 person years for couples who always used a condom, and 6.8 per 100 person years for couples who used condoms irregularly or not at all.

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This is less than complete protection.

With two of the first generation women (Lara Roxx and Jessica Dee) testing positive (so far) we are experiencing a very high infection rate. (Based on the two infections so far out of thirteen exposures the sample infection rate is about 15%.)

Until we know more I'm not convinced that anything less than complete protection is good enough for those of us here in Los Angeles. And the evidence doesn't convince me that condoms give 100% protection in actual use regardless of how good they look in the laboratory.

Knowing that you have always used condoms and never been infected is useless information unless we know how many times you were exposed to HIV infections.

The only completely safe sex is sex with an uninfected partner.

-- Modified on 4/30/2004 2:42:23 AM

I am very concerned myself on this recent news of events with the pron industry.  After asking medical professionals they told me to use only laxtex condoms and waterbased lubciates. I asked my gynogolist about contracting Aids orally he said it's very small percentage. Their is chance to get bad Goneria in mouth.  

I know the strain from Brazil  very strong. One medical docor inegative.n Calif, kept monitoring these tests, finally they came back. Another nurse professional was stabbed in her hand while the doctor did a procedure. She had to take these medications for 4 months.

Also I was told by gays and lesbian comunity that gay women lesbians have very low incidene of AIds,

From the article, "Why AIDS is Worse in Africa" by Helen Epstein:

"....The infectiousness of HIV varies with the concentration of the virus in the blood—the more virus there is, the more likely it will get into genital fluids and be passed on during sex. During the first few weeks and months after infection, a person’s blood teems with the virus. But then the immune system produces antibodies that attack HIV. Virus levels fall and may remain low for years, rising again when the person’s immune system eventually fails and AIDS symptoms appear. Some estimates suggest that a person who has been recently infected with HIV may be as much as 100 times more likely to transmit the virus to a partner than someone who has been infected for a long time."

(Conclusion: though the chance of tranmitting the virus is very low in general, it is much higher immediately following infection.  Getting checked every three months is probably not enough.)

From earlier in the article:

"...Heterosexual Americans, like Ugandans, tend to have several long-term relationships, but they usually have them sequentially, not at the same time. If an American contracts HIV, she probably won’t pass it on right away, and if she eventually does, her new partner probably won’t pass it on right away either."

"[Martina] Morris contends that Africans in ordinary heterosexual relationships are linked, not only to each other but also to the partners of their partners’ partners—and to the partners of those partners—via a web of sexual relationships extending across huge regions. If one member contracts HIV, then everyone else may too. Anti-AIDS campaigns warn against contact with prostitutes, but Morris says simultaneous long-term relationships are far more dangerous."

Wear condoms and hope its enough.  I wish I had better news.  

/Zin

Africans have a molecule in their blood unique to people of their race which is highly receptive of the HIV virus (I think HLTV-VII specifically, but I don't remember).

I have long been with the dissenters that HIV does not cause AIDS directly. Partially because of my mistrust of government and partially because the dissenters as a whole are significantly much more talented than the establishment scientists. Two Nobel laureates, Mullis and Montagnier, suggest a co-factor, likely hepatitis.

I get tested every 28 days....everyone should but many dont.
love
Autumn

As I mentioned in a thread a couple of weeks ago, when the HIV scare in the Porn Industry first emerged, this is, essentially, an uncontrolled human experiment in the facility of HIV transmission in the Porn industry (with, sadly, tragic info)

Despite the fact that we have a very few real data points, and a truly CONTROLLED experiment having a sufficient sample popuation in the likelihood of HIV transmission would clearly be unethical, we CAN extrapolate a couple of meaningful hypotheses about HIV from this:

First and foremost:  The estimated data that Mathesar used to provide a predictor of HIV transmission from a single sexual contact between an infected transmitter of body fluids and an uninfected receiver, are clearly under-stated, when applied to the situation at hand in the porn industry right now.  I'd hypothesize that this is likely do to two specific factors:

1) The types of EXTREME sexual behavior in many Porn films is FAR more risky than conventional sex carried out by most heterosexuals.

2) The contagiousness of HIV is actually MUCH higher than previously understood during the period immediately after infection up to perhaps 1-2 months, when Viral Loads for HIV are most elevated in newly infected patients.  The grave implication of this is that even in a regime where folks are getting tested on a regular and consistent basis, one is not even remotely safe, because the period of maximum contagion coincides with the period where periodic HIV testing will most likely not point out an infected party at the time that they are most infectious.  


There is an alternative hypothesis, which, frankly, is the scariest of all:  And that is, that HIV is just a much more contagious disease than we thought in general.  I DON'T believe that there is anything to suggest that THIS hypothesis is valid yet, from the information that we currently have.  However, this hypothesis has CERTAINLY NOT BEEN DISPROVEN by the existing data, but the other two hypotheses I mentioned above are sufficient to explain what has been seen so far.

When all of this is combined with Mathesar's prior post about Condom effectiveness, it presents a very scary scenario, although, I would contend, it is a much scarier scenario for heterosexual women and gay males, than it is for heterosexual males.  Although, I would say this:  We still don't know how exactly how Darren James got his HIV infection.  Was it during straight sex with an infected female partner, or was it during more extreme behavior in which he might have had contact with another male (such as the DP Anal scene he did with Lara Roxx and Marc Anthony, that is believed to have infected Lara Roxx)?

All that being said, I personally still feel safe from HIV engaging in heterosexual vaginal sex with ladies in the business, when a condom is used, and used properly.  Were I a lady, I might feel less so, and I certainly would feel unsafe about engaging in anal sex, even with a condom.

I have long wondered why the pattern of the disease is so different in Africa from what it is in the U.S. and haven't seen anything that I found to be completely convincing.

You quoted the statement, "Some estimates suggest that a person who has been recently infected with HIV may be as much as 100 times more likely to transmit the virus to a partner than someone who has been infected for a long time." This sounds a bit like hyperbole, but may in fact explain what has happened.

Because of the monthly HIV tests at AIM we know that James was in the early and most contageous stage of the disease when he had sex with the 13 women who have been identified as his partners. We now know that (at least) 2 of the 13 have been infected with HIV.

That is a sample infection rate of about 0.15. Because of the small size of the group about the most we can say at the 95% confidence level is that the true infectivity for this population is between 0.02 and 0.54. The conventional estimates of the average infectivity of HIV would put the infectivity of a single act of unprotected receptive anal intercourse at about 0.01. If that were true of this group we would not have (at a 95% level of confidence) more than a single infection.

The number of infections is higher than I expected but would seem to be consistent with the information you quoted without having to postulate some new hyperinfective strain of Brazilian HIV.

--Remember HIV has mutated and some strains are drug resistant now--

HIV is drug resistant period...  It doesn't have to be any mutant strain.  You do realize there's no cure for AIDS, Right?