Howard I. Kushner is the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Professor of Science & Society at Emory University where he holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education in Rollins School of Public Health and in The program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. Kushner, a historian of medicine, is author of four books, including American Suicide: A Psychocultural Exploration (1991) and A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome (1999) and numerous articles on medical history in journals including Lancet, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Perspectives in Biology& Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine, Journal of Pediatric Infectious Disease, Laterality, and Pediatric Cardiology. Kushner’s research has included a collaborative study of Kawasaki Disease, with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, funded by a series of grants including the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, and the Kawasaki Disease Foundation. Recently Kushner has published a series of articles on addiction and its relationship to self-medication. Supported by a grant from the Engelhard Foundation, Kushner was a co-convener of the “Conference on Addiction, the Brain, and Culture” held at Emory in February 2009, and co-editor of a special issue of BioSocieties, 5 (March 2010) entitled “Drugs, addiction and society.” Kushner’s current research focuses on the possible connections between handedness, laterality, and learning disorders. His articles on this topic recently appeared on in The Lancet, Laterality, and Endeavour.