In the wake of National AIDS Day, the weekly Iowa State Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Alliance meeting focused on safer sex.

Pam Carnine, director of the Story County AIDS Coalition, spoke to a group of 25 Wednesday evening in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union.

Tom Purvis, a central Iowa resident living with AIDS, accompanied Carnine.

Carnine and Purvis stressed the need for students at ISU to be careful with sexual activity.

“We have to assume everyone we come into contact with is HIV positive until we know otherwise,” Carnine said.

Carnine said at least 60 percent of people infected with HIV do not know they have the disease.

“There is no profile of the typical person with HIV or AIDS,” Carnine said.

The Ames Office of the AIDS Project of Central Iowa currently serves 228 clients. The youngest client is 5 years old and the oldest is 85.

Carnine said more than 1,000 residents of Iowa have been diagnosed with AIDS. Another 300 have been diagnosed outside of Iowa and later came here to live.

Half of those diagnosed have died, she said.

Carnine said the largest population of people infected with HIV in Iowa are homosexual men.

“For a long time the number had leveled and dropped, but we’re seeing nationwide and in this state an increase again among young gay men,” Carnine said.

Carnine expressed fear that the media picks up on the number of AIDS deaths dropping and focuses on that instead of the fact that the rate of infection is still increasing.

Drugs such as protease inhibitors can slow the effect of AIDS and HIV on the human body and prolong life, Carnine said. But they do not offer a cure.

Vaccines are currently being tested, but Carnine said it could be at least a decade before they are approved and used by the general public.

“The power to stop this virus is in this room,” Carnine said as she pointed to the audience.

Carnine came to the meeting armed with condoms and informational pamphlets.

The pamphlets contained information on everything from making a dental dam to using a condom during sex to prevent the spread of AIDS and other STDs.

Purvis said he lived in San Francisco in the early ’80s when the AIDS epidemic was rapidly spreading and little was known about the disease.

He said he contracted the disease from his partner.

Purvis said he was diagnosed with HIV a decade ago and has been fighting it ever since.

His HIV turned into AIDS in 1994. Since then, he has been taking protease inhibitors.

Purvis said he has survived all of his HIV- and AIDS-infected friends in California and has survived the original group of people who were members of an AIDS support group in central Iowa.

Carnine’s main message of the evening was that no one should ever let their guard down against HIV and AIDS.

AIDS is a reality for everyone, she said — not only in this community, but all over the world.