Compulsory Premarital Screening for HIV

Abstract

To the Editor. —In an article that appeared in the Oct 2, 1987, issue ofJAMA, the authors concluded that premarital screening for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) would be ineffective and inefficient.1As part of this conclusion, it was estimated that this program would result in 350 false-positive reports per year. This article has been referred to by some scientists and legislators as evidence that the Western blot procedure can frequently produce false-positive results. Part of the confusion in the interpretation of Western blot test results has been the absence of a uniform standard defining the specific test results that would constitute a positive result. This issue was addressed by members of the Second Consensus Conference on HIV Testing of the Association of State and Territorial Public Health Laboratory Directors,2who defined those bands that must be present for a positive result. Following these criteria, the data cited