In Reply.—In testing the humerus as a site for BMC measurements, we used the commercially available instrument we had (Norland 278A). We are therefore referring to measurements performed with a specific instrument. We have not performed the study using other instruments, but, as far as we know, this has not been done by others either. If the BMC at the humerus and radius sites were measured by another instrument (eg, Lunar instrument), we believe that our studies would be confirmed by the "more sensitive" instrument.
The coefficient of variation in our article referred to the variability of repositioning, together with the variability between two different investigators. This cannot be compared with the repositioning variability of one investigator, which was apparently the case in the article by Greer et al. In our studies, the coefficient of variation for the measurement, done by one investigator in the postmortem studies, was 3.6%,