As a result of an increase in false positive rates with rapid oral HIV testing in 2005, New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene added the option of testing finger-stick whole blood after any reactive result, before using a Western Blot test to confirm the positive result. Following a further increase of false positives in NYC DOHMH STD Clinics during the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, their clinics opted to forgo further oral screenings, and instead reinsituted testing using finger-stick whole blood. Despite the increase in false positives in NYC DOHMH, the CDC still continues to support the use of noninvasive oral fluid specimens due to their popularity in health clinics and convenience of use. The director of the HIV control program for public health at Seattle King county, reported OraQuick failed to spot at least 8 percent of 133 people found to be infected with a comparable diagnostic test. Strategies implemented to determine quality control and false positive rates were implemented. It is to be understood that any reactive OraQuick test result is a preliminary positive result and will always require a confirmatory test, regardless of the mean of testing (venipuncture whole blood, fingerstick whole blood or oral mucosal transudate fluid) Several other testing sites who did not experience a spike in false positive rates continue to use OraSure's OraQuick HIV Anti-body Testing.
HIV tests have been criticized by AIDS denialists (a fringe group that believes that HIV either does not exist or is harmless). The accuracy of serologic testing has been verified by isolation and culture of HIV and by detection of HIV RNA by PCR, which are widely accepted "gold standards" in microbiology. While AIDS denialists focus on individual components of HIV testing, the combination of ELISA and Western blot used for the diagnosis of HIV is remarkably accurate, with very low false-positive and -negative rates as described above. The views of AIDS denialists are based on highly selective analysis of mostly outdated scientific papers; there is broad scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS.