Following his historic 1985 interview with televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, Rev. Dr. A. Stephen Pieters, an AIDS campaigner, and longstanding HIV survivor known colloquially and popularly as Steve Pieters, passed away on July 8 in Los Angeles as the result of an infection.
Rev. Steve Pieters cause of death: How did Rev. Steve Pieters die?
He had been hospitalized for two weeks. He was 70. He passed away, according to publicist Harlan Boll.
Pieters, who was initially identified as having what was then known as GRID, or Gay Related Immunodeficiency, in 1982, was a long-term survivor of AIDS. He received his AIDS/Kaposi’s Sarcoma and stage 4 lymphoma diagnoses in April 1984, and one medical specialist predicted that he wouldn’t make it to 1985.
However, he was the first participant in a drug trial with an antiviral agent to treat HIV in 1985, and within the first six weeks of receiving therapy with the drug suramin, his malignancies went into remission. The drug’s usage to treat AIDS was stopped due to toxic side effects, but Pieters’ malignancies were still in remission.
