Porn Producer: PrEP Drugs Like Truvada Help Porn Performers, But They Don't Replace Condoms

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has officially encouraged the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medications as a method of HIV prevention, but that doesn't mean drugs like Truvada will change the role of condoms in the making of pornography.

Peter Acworth, the founder and CEO of porn site Kink.com, joined HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri on May 16 to share his take on the necessity of condoms. Though he is excited by the results of Truvada, he doesn't have plans to lift his policy that all actors on Kink.com must wear condoms in their scenes.

"If someone shows up at our door and says, 'I'm on Truvada, I don't need to use condoms,' we've only got their word to take for it, so we wouldn't feel comfortable relaxing our condom-mandatory policy," he said. "I don't see this as a replacement. The highest-risk people, I think, should be using condoms and taking PrEP."

Still, Acworth believes PrEP's benefits are important to the industry.

He added that porn actors' personal sex lives are not monitored like their professional performances, meaning intimate encounters outside of work are often more dangerous than what happens on set. That means Truvada can keep outside infections from infiltrating the workplace, Acworth said.

"There have been occasional people test positive, and there's been moratoriums that have taken place, so we've stopped shooting, we've retested the performer pool and we've determined that those infections happened off set," he said. "So the other exciting thing about Truvada is that it could potentially protect performers during their off-set interactions at home, which no bill, no law is going to change what people do in their own time."

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation about HIV medication and pornography in the video below.