Intravenous Drug Users and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Testing and Counseling-Reply

In Reply.—  Lampinen et al express concern with our conclusion that "in the current year 89.8% of our sample reported no needle sharing, which certainly would argue against a plan to give clean needles or bleach." They note that 26.6% of our respondents failed to answer the question, and that a further bias may have been introduced because approximately 32% of our sample had at least some college education as contrasted to only 19% in our total methadone maintenance treatment program patient population of 1393 patients. It is further pointed out that patients may have understated their amount of needle sharing for fear of staff disapproval. Finally, it is said that our findings would only apply to patients currently in a methadone maintenance treatment program and not to those who had dropped out.We were careful to note that our patients do not represent all IV drug users. We ourselves