Porn Performer Who Tested HIV-Positive: “What They Tell You In Porn Is, ‘You’re Not Going To Make Any Money If You Wear A Condom’”

Derrick Burts, the 24 year old adult film actor who tested HIV-positive at a San Fernando Valley clinic October 8th, spoke publically for the first time Tuesday night, telling the Los Angeles Times that there needs to be mandatory condom use in porn productions, improved testing for sexually transmitted disease, and follow-up care and support for fellow performers. Burts says he tested positive at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation in Sherman Oaks after he worked in both gay and straight porn films for only a few months. He was previously identified only as Patient Zeta. Regular tests are required by producers of straight porn who use a database maintained by a clinic in order to clear actors for work. The Times writes “Burts, who performed in straight films as “Cameron Reid” and gay films as “Derek Chambers,” said he was tested at the clinic Oct. 8, then received a panicked call from clinic staff the following afternoon, summoning him to the office. Once there, he said, clinic staff told him that he had tested HIV positive. They wanted to perform a follow-up test and begin notifying performers he had worked with since his last negative test result Sept. 3. Those performers, he was told, would be placed on a quarantine list while they, too, were tested. Burts said he gave clinic staff the names of about a dozen performers he had worked with in California and Florida in recent weeks 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 their performer database, notifying those he had named and placing them on a quarantine list. The clinic has since said that none of the performers on their quarantine list tested positive. Burts confirmed that his girlfriend tested negative. He said that when he returned to the clinic Oct. 23 to review the second test results, clinic staff told him that they had traced his HIV infection to someone he had performed a scene with who they described to him as a "known positive." Burts now says he wants to speak out, in an effort to alert others that the work he did was “very dangerous,” adding “"What they tell you in porn is, 'You're not going to make any money if you wear a condom, you know, viewers don't want to see that, so I didn't even know you had an option to wear a condom. I had never seen a condom on a straight set in my entire life."