Compassion and awareness will be key to helping AIDS victims and preventing the spread of the disease in years to come, National Commission on AIDS member Mary D. Fisher said last night in a speech at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Fisher, an AIDS patient who spoke at the Republican National Convention earlier this year, asked the audience of approximately 200 both to exercise compassion for those who have the disease and to press research efforts forward.

"Hope thrives where there is compassion. But the story of AIDS in America is a history in which compassion has played far too small a role," said Fisher, who later noted that the families of AIDS patients have "listened to a decade of debate about the morality of their dying loved ones."

Fisher was optimistic about the future of AIDS research, saying, "I'm here to remind you that there is a direct correlation between scientific research and human hope...With hope we create our own boundaries."

However, Professor of Pathology and of Cancer Biology William A. Haseltine, who introduced Fisher, painted a grimmer picture.

"I think you won't find a single scientist who believes we will ever find a cure.

The best we can hope for, or plan for, is a treatment," said Haseltine, who is chief of Dana-Farber's human retrovirology division.

"The future of humanity is the future of AIDS," Haseltine said. "A conservative estimate of the total number of human beings infected by AIDS is 20 million... I predict that unless there is a medical miracle there will be 1 to 2 billion people infected by the year 2020," he said.

Haseltine stressed that there is no mystery about how AIDS is transmitted; almost all cases are transmitted sexually. However, the belief that it is a "homosexual disease" is incorrect, since 90 percent of the men and women suffering from AIDS contracted it through heterosexual sex.

Fisher, a mother of two, stressed the importance of citizens' demanding that the government provide the needed resources for continued AIDS research.

Haseltine also offered advice, such as asking a new partner to be tested for the HIV virus before having sex, increasing biomedical support, and urging leaders to act responsibly.

"If it were not life-and-death, I would not ask that you exhaust your selves and all you have for this mission," Fisher said. "But it is."