An AIDS lecture at NIU Tuesday turned into a debate between a Chicago health clinic representative and several members of the audience at Montgomery Hall Auditorium.

About 75 people attended the lecture led by Sally Mason from the Harold Brown Memorial Clinic, which specializes in AIDS research and testing.

“Victims of AIDS continue to get fired from their jobs and get kicked out of their homes because of the misinformation about AIDS,” she said.

Several members of the audience criticized Mason for focusing on irrelevant aspects of the AIDS issue and giving outdated and vague information.

Biology professor Richard Conway, who attended the lecture, said “What (Mason) said was basically valid, but she was mainly interested in making sure people weren’t violating people’s (gays’ and AIDS victims’) rights.”

Conway, who posed questions about the clinic’s ideology of dealing with the AIDS epidemic, said, “To stress ‘Safe Sex’ doesn’t stop a disease from spreading. We basically want to halt an epidemic,” he said.

One member of the audience said Mason should not discuss the gay population because the disease is not confined to gays. Rather, the lecture should focus on the new information available about AIDS, he said.

“You and your clinic should be more sophisticated about the information you put out,” he said. He said if the public had more detailed information about how the disease is spread, there would be less panic.

“The average person doesn’t want to know more than ‘Do I have it or don’t I have it?'” replied Mason, although she agreed people still are very ignorant about AIDS.

Mason said the lecture’s purpose was to provide valid information, including the history, origins and clinical signs of AIDS, about the disease.

The 32,000 cases of AIDS in the United States are caused by a virus that is “injected” into the body by transfusions, intravenous drug use, blood or semen, or through the umbilical cord of mother to child. The virus then replicates quickly and attacks cells called “T-cells,” which protect the immune system, she said.

The result is an ineffective immune system, referred to as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Those having AIDS begin getting infections and diseases which cannot be fought off, and the victim eventually dies.