HIV testing is the answer--what's the question?

There is reason for concern about the false positive rate in testing for antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Even when the specificity of a test is high, some persons who are truly without disease will nevertheless test positive. In populations in which the prevalence of disease is low, these false positive results represent a substantial proportion of all positive results, lowering the probability that a positive test result indicates true disease.1 , 2 The potential consequences of incorrectly informing a person that he or she is infected with HIV are severe: certainly anguish, fear, and depression; perhaps lost jobs, denied . . .