Potential Use of Home HIV Testing

The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether or not to approve diagnostic kits for infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that would allow blood collection at home. A person would use a lance provided in the kit to obtain blood from a finger, place a drop on a filter paper, and mail the specimen to a laboratory, where screening and confirmatory tests, if necessary, would be performed. The results would be obtained over the telephone through the use of a code number. As discussed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal , 1 proponents of these tests believe that . . .