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Porn: California Attorney General Kamala Harris Asked to Investigate Adult Industry Medical Clinic

Categories: Porn

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Porn.
The war over condoms in porn continued this week.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation sent a letter to California Attorney General Kamala Harris asking her to look into the transfer off the adult industry's main health-care and testing clinic from nonprofit to for-profit status.

The clinic, known as AIM for Adult Industry Medical, admitted that it went for-profit in order to avoid L.A. County regulation of nonprofit clinics.

The clinic stated upon its reopening as a private enterprise last week:

"Relieved from pointless harassment that came with oversight from the County Health Department, the new AIM more appropriately is responsible to the California Medical Association. AIM plans to provide more services, both on the internet and in house, and continue its relationships with current clients while welcoming new ones."

AHF and its leader, Michael Weinstein, have been fighting to get the mostly San Fernando Valley-based porn industry to employ condoms on-set. State law requires it, but California doesn't have the resources to enforce it. And the adult biz says if condoms are used, it will lose customers, and millions if not billions of revenues will head to places outside California where condom use isn't regulated.

As part of its condom battle, AHF contends that the AIM clinic is at the heart of the industry's refusal to adopt condoms: It maintains a system of regular testing for performers, whose results can then be accessed by producers.

Porn makers claim that makes sets safe -- safer than sex in the general populace, in fact.

AHF says it's simply an excuse not to follow the law and make sure workers aren't exposed to blood-borne pathogens.

Now it thinks the clinic's transfer to private ownership is fishy enough to have Harris look into it. Here's what Weinstein says in a statement Monday:

"As a private clinic, AIM will still be under the jurisdiction of, and responsible for reporting any positive HIV and STD results to county public health officials. We have serious doubts that the principals involved in AIM, who seem to have operated in defiance of California law all along, have properly followed California law in converting AIM from a troubled nonprofit clinic to a private, for profit medical facility, and we are asking California's Attorney General to immediately open an investigation into this matter."

Is he just asking for a fishing expedition, or is this matter worthy of the new A.G.'s time?

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2 comments
overshadow
overshadow

The story is incorrect-

...they are under the jurisdiction of the California Medical Board, a regulatory licensing body, not the California Medical Association, a membership group of physicians.

MichaelWhiteacre
MichaelWhiteacre

The word for this is harassment.

It also helps make the adult industry's case that this is really about shutting down AIM in order to create a vacuum -- and then swooping in with a "plan" to fix it all -- condoms!

Condoms INSTEAD OF TESTING. AHF's Whitney Engeran-Cordova personally told me that they would prefer a condom-only regime.

Why else work so hard to shut down A TESTING CLINIC?

The strategy is clearly to place adult workers in CLEAR jeopardy in order to demonstrate that they are not safe.

This whole AHF strategy is not about worker safety -- there's no is of knowing if a condom-only regime is safe because the only condom-only (or actually, mostly condom) system is gay porn, and there's no testing to determine whether or not it works! This is a sick joke.

This drive of AHF's is a grisly science experiment with the health (and livelihoods) of human beings in the balance.

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