2008 Press Releases
16.10.2008
The lecture titled “Abraham Lincoln: A Unifying Diagnosis”, will take place at UCC on Thursday next, October 23rd at 8pm in Boole II Lecture Theatre. This is the 10th Annual De Pazzi Lecture, held in honour of Sr De Pazzi, retired Matron of Mercy University Hospital. It is hosted by UCC’s Department of Medicine and Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC). The lecture is free and open to the public.
Dr Sotos is a cardiologist with professional interests in sleep medicine diagnostics, unusual manifestations of disease, and in the medical histories of American Presidents. In his lecture, he will take the audience on a fascinating medical tour of Lincoln and his family and offer insights into what he believes made Lincoln so tall, so thin, so unattractive, and what gave him his long limbs, large feet, high voice, odd lips, sluggish bowels and astonishing joint flexibility.
The suggestion is that Lincoln and several members of his family had the rare genetic cancer disorder MEN2B (multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B), an extremely rare condition, afflicting perhaps one person in a million. Dr Sotos proposes that Lincoln would have died of cancer within a year had he not be shot on Good Friday, April 14th 1865. This is a somewhat controversial theory, (others have long speculated that Lincoln had Marfan Syndrome), but it could explain the early deaths of Lincoln’s mother and two of his sons.
Dr Sotos is currently CEO of Apneos Corporation. He is a medical consultant to the top-rated television series “House, MD”.