When I moved to Las Vegas, I decided to be even more open and honest with my health care practitioners and I told them I do amateur porn. My GP understood the necessity of frequent testing and obliged by writing me orders for yet another round of STD testing before each set of shoots. Then I had to get my yearly Pap smear and mammogram (my mom had breast cancer so I get one annually due to high risk) at my gynecologist, and I told her what I do and that I needed to be retested because I had shoots coming up. She pulled up my records from my GP and saw what tests he usually ordered. She said, "I know Dr. XXXXXXX has ordered chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, and so forth, but I test for EVERYTHING." I said, sign me up! and off I went to the lab.
My gynecologist tests for EVERYTHING. and i do mean EVERYTHING.
even when i lived in florida and went to the county health department and they knew i was in porn, even they didn't test me for everything my las vegas gynecologist tests me for.
so one day i went to talent testing's website. talent testing, in case you don't know, is one of the porn industry's testing network so you can get very quick results to prove you are disease free and thus safe to work with in a porn shoot.
here is a list of their most comprehensive testing package, the gold panel:
HIV-1 NAT
HBsAg
Anti-HCV
Chlamydia
Gonorrhea
Trichomonas Vaginalis
Syphilis (RPR)
TREP-SURE EIA - Treponema pallidum Antibody, IgG by ELISA
what exactly are these tests, you ask. Well, ok, maybe you aren't really asking, but humor me and pretend you are asking.
HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
HBsAG is the hepatitis B virus.
Anti-HCV is the hepatitis C virus.
Chlamydia
Gonorrhea
Trichomonas Vaginalis
Syphilis
Treponema pallidum is the bacteria that causes syphilis.
Pretty comprehensive, wouldn't you say? you would think that after having been tested for all that, you could walk out and say to your next sex partner, "i'm clean!" right?
Wrong.
My gynecologist was visibly upset that a testing company that is the industry standard leaves out some very important tests. She made it clear to me what Talent Testing is lacking.
Genital herpes/oral herpes (HSV-1/HSV-2)
Genital warts
HPV (human papillomavirus)
Hepatitis A
Bacterial vaginosis
Crabs
Scabies
Amebiasis
Cryptosporidiosis
Giardiasis
Shigellosis
Chancroid (Haemophilus ducreyi)
Granuloma inguinale or (Klebsiella granulomatis)
Candidiasis (yeast infection)
Hepatitis D
Hepatitis E
Molluscum contagiosum virus MCV
Say what???
Yeah.
Good grief. I asked her why would a company allow porn talent to go out and work without being more thorough. her opinion was threefold:
1. money. it would be cost prohibitive for the testing facilities to test for all these nasties and most people in the porn industry could not afford to pay for all these tests before a shoot.
2. time. some of these tests require a swab of the mouth. vagina, cervix and/or penis to run a culture. this would take more time for the drawing facility to take the swabs, and would take the lab more time to get results back to the patient.
3. and finally, the dirty little secret: some of these STDs are so prevalent, and are spreading so rapidly, it would decimate the porn industry if talent were tested for it. let me explain.
This boggled my mind: there are 318.9 million people in the USA.
HPV: 25% of the american population has HPV and according to the CDC, sometime in your life you will probably have it. just in case you didn't know, there is a link between HPV and cervical cancer. don't you think we should be tested for something that could cause us cancer? one of our own, angelique pettyjohn, died of cervical cancer at the age of 49. shouldn't we be more vigilant about this?
HERPES: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one out of six people in the United States aged 14 to 49 have genital herpes caused by the HSV-2 infection (the herpes simplex virus often responsible for genital herpes). The overall genital herpes statistic is probably higher, the CDC stated, since many people are also contracting genital herpes through oral sex caused by HSV-1 (the kind of herpes usually responsible for cold sores). Taking that into account, genital herpes statistics are usually quoted at closer to 25 percent for women and 10 percent for men, but most of these people don’t even know they have it. now my gynecologist said, and it makes sense, that people in porn will likely be passing herpes to each other more so than the general population because, as i have said crudely for years, the porn industry family is incestuous and sooner or later, we will all fuck each other either directly or indirectly. so, the likelihood that people in porn has a much higher percentage rate of herpes is logical. but the scary part is, MOST OF US DON'T KNOW IF WE HAVE IT because it is often times asymptomatic all your life, and WE DON'T GET TESTED FOR IT by talent testing.
i need to get a few hours of sleep so i am going to end this for now. but for your own sake, please don't think you are "disease free" just because you got tested. be sure you get tested for EVERYTHING. in some cases, ignorance is not bliss. i often ask my fellow sexworkers, when was the last time you were tested for everything that talent testing doesn't test for? most people have never been fully tested. they may not want to know. they may not be able to afford a complete work up. they may think they are "clean" because they have no symptoms (even though many STDs can be carried by you and passed along by you without your knowledge). People, don't we owe it to ourselves, and if not to ourselves, to our fellow sexworkers to #knowyourstatus ? not just your talent testing status, but your COMPLETE status?
think about it.
please.
Yeah.
Good grief. I asked her why would a company allow porn talent to go out and work without being more thorough. her opinion was threefold:
1. money. it would be cost prohibitive for the testing facilities to test for all these nasties and most people in the porn industry could not afford to pay for all these tests before a shoot.
2. time. some of these tests require a swab of the mouth. vagina, cervix and/or penis to run a culture. this would take more time for the drawing facility to take the swabs, and would take the lab more time to get results back to the patient.
3. and finally, the dirty little secret: some of these STDs are so prevalent, and are spreading so rapidly, it would decimate the porn industry if talent were tested for it. let me explain.
This boggled my mind: there are 318.9 million people in the USA.
HPV: 25% of the american population has HPV and according to the CDC, sometime in your life you will probably have it. just in case you didn't know, there is a link between HPV and cervical cancer. don't you think we should be tested for something that could cause us cancer? one of our own, angelique pettyjohn, died of cervical cancer at the age of 49. shouldn't we be more vigilant about this?
HERPES: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one out of six people in the United States aged 14 to 49 have genital herpes caused by the HSV-2 infection (the herpes simplex virus often responsible for genital herpes). The overall genital herpes statistic is probably higher, the CDC stated, since many people are also contracting genital herpes through oral sex caused by HSV-1 (the kind of herpes usually responsible for cold sores). Taking that into account, genital herpes statistics are usually quoted at closer to 25 percent for women and 10 percent for men, but most of these people don’t even know they have it. now my gynecologist said, and it makes sense, that people in porn will likely be passing herpes to each other more so than the general population because, as i have said crudely for years, the porn industry family is incestuous and sooner or later, we will all fuck each other either directly or indirectly. so, the likelihood that people in porn has a much higher percentage rate of herpes is logical. but the scary part is, MOST OF US DON'T KNOW IF WE HAVE IT because it is often times asymptomatic all your life, and WE DON'T GET TESTED FOR IT by talent testing.
i need to get a few hours of sleep so i am going to end this for now. but for your own sake, please don't think you are "disease free" just because you got tested. be sure you get tested for EVERYTHING. in some cases, ignorance is not bliss. i often ask my fellow sexworkers, when was the last time you were tested for everything that talent testing doesn't test for? most people have never been fully tested. they may not want to know. they may not be able to afford a complete work up. they may think they are "clean" because they have no symptoms (even though many STDs can be carried by you and passed along by you without your knowledge). People, don't we owe it to ourselves, and if not to ourselves, to our fellow sexworkers to #knowyourstatus ? not just your talent testing status, but your COMPLETE status?
think about it.
please.
for the sake of your next coworker.
