Sean Sasser, AIDS activist and MTV star, has died at age 44.
Queerty.com reports, Sasser entered the American consciousness as Pedro Zamora’s boyfriend on MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco, back in the early 1990s. Zamora, who was HIV positive, passed away not long after the show ended, due to complications of the disease — some say the stress of the filming process led to his deterioration in health at a time when HIV medications were much less effective than they are today. Sasser lived on, working for numerous political and social organizations and becoming a well-known AIDS activist in his own right.
According to his life partner, Michael Kaplan, Sasser died of mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lungs. No other information was released immediately about his medical condition, but mesothelioma has been linked to a weakened immune system in some people with AIDS.
