Clad in jeans and a sweater, with shorn hair and dangling silver-heart earrings soaking up the stagelights, Lauren Burk looked pretty normal.

No fainting spells, no sickly pallor, no open sores.

Burk, a registered nurse from Cresson, is infected with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome virus. And she is normal.

Speaking to a crowd gathered in Schwab Auditorium last night, Burk said people infected with AIDS can appear just as "normal" as healthy people.

"There's no sign -- there's no blue dot on my head. There's nothing that you can tell that people have the AIDS virus," Burk said. "And that should scare the hell out of every one of you."

Condoms are the key to preventing the spread of AIDS, Burk said.

Burk contracted the AIDS virus eight years ago from her husband, Patrick, a hemophiliac who received an HIV-infected blood transfusion.

But neither realized they had AIDS because the disease had received little attention in the medical world and from the media, Burk said. In fact, she added, AIDS was then still known as GRID -- gay-related immune deficiency.

In 1984, Burk and her husband had a baby, Dwight. A sickly newborn, Dwight spent most of his life on respirators and fed by tubes, Burk said.

Although she suspected her son had AIDS, doctors insisted that babies could not have AIDS, she said.

After countless operations and tests, doctors in Pittsburgh informed her that her son had AIDS, and in December 1985, Dwight died.

Upon his son's death, Patrick completely lost all will to live, Burk said tearfully. After he attempted suicide by taking a drug overdose, Patrick slipped into a coma but survived, only to succumb to bone-marrow tuberculosis, a disease in which the patient bleeds to death through body openings such as the nose, ears and mouth.

Originally weighing about 185 pounds, Patrick lost nearly 85 pounds before his death, she said.

Burk said that since then she has devoted her life to her 10-year-old daughter from a previous marriage and has worked with the Children's AIDS Fund, a group that cares for children whose parents have died from AIDS.

"I am not afraid to die," Burk said. "I know that there's something better. I know I'll see my baby and I can hold my baby and I'll see my husband again."

Most audience members sat rapt throughout Burk's narrative, sniffling and hastily rubbing their wet eyes.

"I wasn't real psyched up for (the speech)," said Carol Theisen (graduate-health education), adding that she thought the speech would be dull since Burk was not a controversial figure.

But Theisen said Burk's speech impressed her and personalized AIDS.

"It made me cry," admitted Kris Krahe (sophomore-landscape architecture) with a laugh.