I totally agree with you on this MC It's either positive or negative! In a message dated 7/19/2008 11:54:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
there's no such thing as very very very, or very very or very positive, or faint positive: there is positive, or there is negative. give me a couple of days and i will even be able to give you the reference from a far more reputable source than myself, because i just found it for sure the other day. i believe the wording, as some of us have less elegantly stated it before, was that the spot responds with coloration, or no coloration. if you've never seen a snap-type ELISA test, it might not make that much sense, but it's a little piece of paper that has dots in different places that are treated to respond to different antigens or antibodies or test solution: it doesn't measure how MUCH, or how RECENT, or any of that, it just says that yes, that particular whatever IS there. i have never seen, anywhere, any reference to the color having any quantifiable value, especially considering the nature of the test: you HAVE to read the dots at a specific time period after the test is started, or it is not valid, as the paper can continue to react past that time. so if the FeLV circle has NO COLOR at 10 minutes or whatever the specific test specifies, the test result is NEGATIVE. ten minutes later, for those vets who forgot to set the timer (doing snap tests incorrectly is one of the top ten mistakes vets admit to) that same circle may actually show color. the cat is NOT positiive, because the accurate testing period is OVER. so a light spot at 10 minutes is as positive as a dark spot at 10 minutes is, either -- it's the existence of color, at the specific time that counts. do vets not realize this? i'm not sure. i don't remember the last time i read the idexx instructions, but they're pretty detailed, and i don't think they were unclear. so i'm not sure if vets are trying to cushion the blow, knowing that one should never take the results of a single test, especially an ELISA, as the final determinant, they haven't read the instructions themselves in years, or well, it LOOKS lighter, and they've just forgotten whatever they knew about the underlying science of the test..... TAZZY'S ANIMAL TRANSPORTS SIAMESE & COLLIE RESCUE _http://tazzys.org/_ (http://tazzys.org/index.html) _http://www.hurricanepetsrescue.org/_ (http://www.hurricanepetsrescue.org/) OTRA VERIFIED TRANSPORTER (On The Road Again) Terrie Mohr-Forker **************Get fantasy football with free live scoring. Sign up for FanHouse Fantasy Football today. (http://www.fanhouse.com/fantasyaffair?ncid=aolspr00050000000020)
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