Joseph H. Bates, MD

At the time Stalking the Great Killer was published, Joe Bates was associate dean and professor of epidemiology at the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock. A native son of Arkansas, he won international acclaim for his tuberculosis research and pioneering treatment methods. He was revered by family members and friends across Arkansas including many close friends and colleagues in the Arkansas medical community.

Bates served as president of the American Thoracic Society in 1988 and president of the American Lung Association in 1994. In 2000, he was awarded the Trudeau Medal, the highest award of the American Thoracic Society.

A member of the Honor Medical Society at the time of his graduation from the University of Arkansas Medical School in 1957, Bates was designated as a Distinguished Alumnus of both Hendrix College and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

He contributed to more than a dozen medical books on tuberculosis and infectious disease over his lengthy career and published numerous articles in the most prestigious of U.S. medical journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, American Review of Respiratory Disease, and Annals of Internal Medicine.

Active until the end of his life, he died following a short illness in 2023.