This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
In Reply.—
I appreciate the remarks and statistical data provided by Drs Rietschel and colleagues. Furthermore, I have no real disagreement with their comments regarding the difficulty of assessing the prevalence of disease(s) in a given population. I am sure this is an area in which many of us are hesitant to draw any rigid conclusions.Nevertheless, since the publication of my letter, I have received communication from two more dermatologists (one in Los Angeles, the other at a military installation in Virginia) who have also been impressed by the relative paucity of black patients with scabies that they have seen. With scabies tending to be one of the most symptomatic diseases to afflict the skin, it is doubtful that blacks with the condition would be any less likely to seek treatment than nonblacks.Perhaps it is best to say that the role played by race—if any—in the development of