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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
Seattle—King County Department of Public Health University of Washington School of Medicine Seattle

JAMA. 1987;258(24):3513.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The Letters by Hill¹ and Bartelt and Bowman² raise important issues, but both reveal confusion between two kinds of anonymous data collection. The replies by the authors of the articles in question^3-5 allude to but do not delineate the differences.

Testing for epidemiologic study purposes may be truly anonymous, or blinded—ie, without means for the investigators or anyone else, including the subject, to learn an individual's test result. This is accomplished by removing identifiers from the specimens and destroying all records that would permit relinking of identifiers with specimens or with other data before testing is performed or data are analyzed. Almost all ethicists agree that blinded studies do not require the consent of the subject if no information, specimen collection, or procedure is required apart from those done routinely for clinical or other purposes. The Code of Federal Regulations (Title 45, Part 46.101.b) . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Senior Contributing Editor; Sharon Iverson, Assistant Editor.

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