Trained as a heart failure and transplantation cardiologist, John Sotos, MD attended medical school and performed all of his clinical training at Johns Hopkins, where he was heavily influenced by two giants in American medicine: Dr. Victor McKusick and Dr. Philip Tumulty.

His interest in presidential health began in medical school, after reading about the post-shooting clinical course of President James Garfield. The SickPresidents web site was launched in 2000 (under the "Doctor Zebra" name). Early on, it twice won the twice won the Yahoo! Website of the Day award, and was even anthologized in a college textbook of English. It is often referenced by the media, such as the New York Times.

Beyond the SickPresidents web site, Dr. Sotos has made original contributions to presidential health:

• 2003: Made the case in a peer-reviewed journal article that President William Taft was impaired by severe obstructive sleep apnea while president.
• 2006: Provided first public suspicion that Vice President Dick Cheney had congestive heart failure.
• 2008: Made the case in his book, The Physical Lincoln, that President Abraham Lincoln was afflicted with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B and, if he had not been shot, would have soon died in office from the disease.
• 2016: Made the case in a peer-reviewed journal article that untreated pernicious anemia caused First Lady Mary Lincoln's tragic and well-known mental troubles, as well as her numerous physical ailments, culminating in her death at the young age of 63.
• 2021: Made the case in a peer-reviewed medical publication that the United States should require physicians to disclose any health history about presidents or presidential candidates that would medically disqualify them as an air traffic controller.
• 2026: Made the case on this website that President Donald Trump was afflicted with systemic amyloidosis.

All of this has led to coverage by virtually every English-speaking news organization in the world, from National Geographic to CBS News to Nature to Good Morning America to Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Dr. Sotos has also been interviewed on current matters of presidential health by outlets such as CNN (on camera), NPR, Vanity Fair, and the Washington Post, but he told the jerks at Jon Stewart's Daily Show to take a hike.

His sometime pen-name, "Dr. Zebra," comes from the title of his first book: Zebra Cards: An Aid to Obscure Diagnosis, which is a catalog of surprising signs and symptoms in clinical medicine, designed to stump even the most experienced physician. In 2005 he sent a copy of Zebra Cards to the producers of the television series House, MD and was thereafter hired as a medical technical advisor for the remaining six seasons of the show's run. Authors of other major cultural works have acknowledged their debt to Dr. Sotos's work, including George Saunders for Lincoln in the Bardo, and Abraham Verghese for The Covenant of Water.

Currently Dr. Sotos is CEO of Expertscape Inc. and a retired 35-year US Air Force flight surgeon who served two volunteer combat deployments with the USAF Special Operations rescue service. His personal web site is sotos.net.

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