Climate: Energy Use

TO THE EDITOR:

Re “Burying a Mountain of CO 2 ” (Feb. 10): Turning carbon dioxide from power plants into rock and burying it is a good idea. An even better one is leaving the carbon dioxide that is currently buried as coal safely underground. We can use efficiency technologies to reduce our demand for energy. And we must phase in renewable energy technologies, such as Iceland’s geothermal and our own wind and solar technologies, to meet that reduced demand.

Daniel F. Becker

Washington

The writer is director of the Safe Climate Campaign.

Capturing carbon is difficult and expensive, unless you’re a plant. — Ender, TX, posted to nytimes.com

H.I.V. Drugs: A Failed Trial

TO THE EDITOR:

Re “A Failed Trial in Africa Raises Questions About How to Test H.I.V. Drugs” (Feb. 5): Despite high rates of infection and many years of public education, H.I.V.-related stigma persists in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in the United States. It is possible that women’s reluctance to adhere to the prevention regimen, known as PreP, in the Voice study was, in part, related to stigma. Multipurpose prevention technologies are products in development that combine contraception with prevention of H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted infections. Some formulations include the same antiretroviral as in PreP, but there are many others in the product development pipeline. Many researchers and women’s health advocates are hopeful that this combination approach to prevention may be more acceptable to women because they will see this as a form of family planning, which is generally less stigmatized than H.I.V. prevention, and can be accessed in familiar health care settings.

An overwhelming 93 percent of respondents in a recent multicountry Ipsos Healthcare study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported that they would choose contraception combined with H.I.V. prevention over a single-indication form of prevention. Delivering H.I.V. prevention in combination with contraception is worth the investment. The potential impact on women’s global health justifies further research.