Condoms in porn: Government should not intrude, group says

LOS ANGELES—Some of the most prominent purveyors of porn say they'll start packing up their sex toys and abandoning the nation's Porn Capital if authorities really do carry through with a nascent effort to police their movie sets and order that every actor be outfitted with a condom.


That effort took a serious leap forward Tuesday when the Los Angeles City Council voted 9-1 to grant final approval to an ordinance that would deny film permits to producers who do not comply with the condom requirement. The measure now goes to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for approval.


Before the measure can take effect, however, the council has called for the creation of a committee made up of police officials, the city attorney, state health officials and others to determine how it might be enforced.


"It's going to be interesting to see how in fact they do try to enforce it and whose going to fund it and all of the time and effort they're going to spend," said Steven Hirsch, co-founder and co-chairman of Los Angeles-based Vivid, one of the largest makers of erotic movies.


Duke said City Hall's measure could push some porn companies to go underground or leave Los Angeles. The multibillion dollar porn industry is centered in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.


Some porn industry representatives have previously said porn filmed with condoms doesn't sell as well.


Duke said Tuesday that another reason is that some porn performers prefer to not use condoms, saying "it's really hard on their bodies" during lengthy, grueling shooting schedules. "It's very different on a set … We're in favor of choice for performers." AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said there are many performers who do want mandatory condoms, such as Jenna Jameson, and that condoms are consistently used in gay porn.


On Tuesday, the City Council voted 9 to 1 to require porn performers to wear condoms during filming and to pay a fee to fund surprise inspections of film permits. The move came after the L.A.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation collected enough signatures to force a vote on the proposed ordinance in June. Rather than take the ordinance to the ballot box, the City Council decided to adopt the AIDS group's ordinance.


L.A. Councilman Paul Koretz said he believed the public would have passed the ordinance if it came on the ballot. "We see the handwriting on the wall," Koretz said. A special election in June would have cost the city more than $4 million.


Koretz said he expected the mainstream porn firms would not go underground "and will comply with the law."


Some public health experts have suggested that porn producers could use video editing equipment to edit out condom images from the final film product, if that is what producers desire. Producers, however, have said that would dramatically increase production costs, and could send the industry underground or out of the state.


AIDS Healthcare Foundation spokesman Ged Kenslea said he didn't believe the porn industry would leave the L.A. area, given that adult film talent, camera operators and lighting technicians are so entrenched in Southern California.

Drug Resistance Observable in New TB Strain, Indian Doctors Say

MUMBAI—A top Mumbai pulmonologist has told the Indian government he has seen 12 cases of tuberculosis in this city that are totally resistant to all of the current treatments, forcing India to confront weaknesses in its programs to combat this contagious, potentially fatal lung disease.


Zarir Udwadia, one of Mumbai's leading private pulmonologists, reported the first four cases in a letter in December to the Clinical Infectious Diseases magazine, a publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He said in an interview that he has now seen and tested a total of 12 patients at Mumbai's Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center since late last year who are resistant to all forms of treatment. Three of the patients have died, he said.


"While this handful of cases is worrying, it's just the tip of the iceberg," said Soumya Swaminathan, senior deputy director of the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, part of the Indian Council of Medical Research, the government's network of biomedical research institutions. "The bottom line is we need to take TB much more seriously."


Indian health officials met in Mumbai Wednesday with Dr. Udwadia and other pulmonologists to develop a plan of action. The municipal official who convened the meeting to develop the plan, Manisha Maiskar, couldn't be reached for comment.


No one expects the Indian TB strains to rapidly spread elsewhere. The airborne disease is mainly transmitted through close personal contact and isn't nearly as contagious as the flu. Indeed, most of the cases of this kind of TB were not from person-to-person infection but were mutations that occurred in poorly treated patients.


What's more, there's a debate within the public health community about whether to even label TB infections as totally drug resistant. The World Health Organization hasn't accepted the term and still considers the cases to be what's now called extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR. However, Dr. Paul Nunn, a coordinator at the WHO's Stop TB Department in Geneva, said there is ample proof that these virtually untreatable cases do exist.


The Indian hospital that saw the initial cases tested a dozen medicines and none of them worked, a pretty comprehensive assessment. A TB expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they do appear to be totally resistant to available drugs.

Alcohol Consumption Most Dangerous in Early Pregnancy

Drinking and pregnancy don’t mix, but when are babies most vulnerable to the effects of alcohol?

The end of the first trimester appears to be the period when alcohol can wreak the most havoc on fetal development, causing physical deformities as well as behavioral and cognitive symptoms, according to research in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

According to the March of Dimes, about 1 in 12 women admit to drinking during pregnancy, and 1 in 30 say they binge-drink, or consume five or more drinks at one sitting. Exposure to alcohol in utero leads to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders in about 40,000 newborns every year in the U.S. While adults can break down alcohol relatively safely, still-developing fetuses tend to keep more alcohol in their blood, which can hinder the development of brain and body.

Deformities associated with fetal alcohol syndrome include small head, small upper jaw, smooth and thin upper lip and small, narrow eyes.

When women consumed alcohol between the seventh and 12th weeks of their pregnancies, the risk of problems with their newborn's lips increased by 25 percent per drink, the chance of a shorter length of the baby climbed 18 percent, the possibility of reduced birth weight rose 16 percent, and the chance of having a smaller head size went up 12 percent, according to the study.

"These findings show that drinking alcohol between week seven and 12 of pregnancy are clearly associated with a risk for (fetal alcohol syndrome) facial features, as well as a decrease in birth weight and length," said Christina Chambers, a professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego and CTIS program director.

Chambers said the results do not mean it is safe to drink in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, since the study only looked at live births and does not include miscarriages or stillbirths caused by alcohol exposure.

"If anything, this further supports the idea that there is no designated safe period for drinking alcohol in pregnancy, and that discontinuing alcohol consumption as soon as possible, and, ideally, prior to pregnancy is the best approach to preventing FAS," Chambers said.

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, children with FAS could face brain developmental problems that affect coordination, movement, thinking, speech and social skills. There is also a risk of have heart defects.

NJ parents: Disabled girl was denied transplant

The parents of a 3-year-old New Jersey girl who claim she's being denied a kidney transplant because of her mental disabilities said their problems may be with one doctor, and not The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia."It's one doctor who's never seen us who is making this call," Joe Rivera told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We've had a great experience with CHOP. We're not against CHOP, but maybe something needs to be changed. One guy tarnished their reputation.


Rivera, 39, and his wife Chrissy plan to meet with hospital officials next week, amid a growing online furor that has experts warning the situation may be much more complex than many realize. The hospital has not commented on the child's case, citing patient confidentiality laws, but acknowledged the online discussion and said on its Facebook page that "we hear your concerns."
Chrissy Rivera posted a blog entry last week that described an encounter she claimed happened at The Children's Hospital. She and her husband were there to discuss treatment for her daughter, Amelia, who was born with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, a rare genetic defect that can cause physical and mental disabilities. Amelia will need a transplant in six months to a year.


The researchers added that previous controversies over mental disabilities and transplants led the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to express concern that many people with disabilities are "denied evaluation and referral for transplantation."
Rivera's blog noted that doctors said Amelia won't need a transplant for six months to a year.
Some experts said that if Rivera's claims are accurate, the hospital's actions are very disturbing.
"Everyone deserves an equal chance to these organs, regardless of your mental capacity," said Charles Camosy, a professor of Christian Ethics at Fordham University.
Camosy said that while it's true that there are shortages of kidneys and other organs, the criteria used to make transplant decisions "should not ever devalue those that are mentally disabled."
"This is a growing movement that transcends liberal or conservative that says this kind of life, because it's so vulnerable, it deserves special protection," he said.
Whatever the medical details of Amelia's situation, her mother's blog captured the anger of parents with disabled children who don't want outsiders to decide life and death issues.
"Do not talk about her quality of life," Rivera wrote of her exchange with the doctor last week. "You have no idea what she is like. We have crossed many, many road blocks with Amelia and this is just one more. So, you don't agree she should have it done? Fine. But tell me who I talk to next."
Mary Beth Happ, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center whose research focuses on communication with non-vocal patients, said that the issue of severe mental disability and kidney transplants has been a source of contention for nearly two decades.
"Co-existing health problems such as weakened immune system and/or heart disease, which are prevalent in (Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome), are an additional risk that transplant centers and parents must consider," Happ wrote in an e-mail.
But Happ and Caplan noted that it's virtually impossible to have a full discussion of Amelia's case because of medical privacy laws.
"We're seeing this more and more where very private, difficult medical decisions are debated in the media without the full facts," Happ said, adding that while the general discussion can be good, the risks of one side or another inflating the situation is "really problematic."