Alumnae Profile

Barbara Friedman Mishkin ’57

When Congress first held hearings in the early 1980s about misconduct in clinical trials and dangers to patient-subjects, one woman’s testimony was particularly critical. More than a decade earlier, Barbara Friedman Mishkin ’57 had initiated the national dialogue on research integrity—and she continues to lead it today.

Last winter, the Health Improvement Institute recognized her pioneering role with its 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Human Research Protection. In his letter supporting her nomination, the Department of Health and Human Service’s Alan R. Price called Barbara “the world’s expert on such issues,” as well as “the brightest, kindest, most intellectual, and most ethical attorney” he’s ever known.

Barbara, an MHC trustee from 1985 to 1990, takes these accolades in stride. “My focus has always been protecting the integrity of the science and the people involved, whether they’re the subjects of research or wrongly accused scientists or a whistleblower or committee members reviewing scientific misconduct,” she says.

In fact, Barbara was the only person who served as a deputy director of all three federal advisory commissions that developed regulations for protecting human subjects from 1974 to 1983. During those years, while also raising four children and earning a law degree at night from American University, she became concerned about the lack of due process procedures for handling allegations of scientific misconduct. She collaborated first with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and later with the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists to develop much-needed policies and procedures.

These days Barbara works primarily with universities and medical schools to assure compliance with those very regulations—which now come with federal research grants—and guide them through scientific misconduct investigations. She’s also mentoring young lawyers so she can “pass the baton.”

Barbara believes that all the strands of her professional life were nourished at Mount Holyoke. A philosophy major who minored in religion and psychology, she credits being able to combine disciplines with launching her into a master’s program in philosophy and behavioral sciences at Yale, which led to her distinguished government career in bioethics. As for her now legendary commitment to protecting people and science, Barbara says that much of it comes from absorbing the values of Mount Holyoke. “I learned that women can excel and be leaders, and that we all have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to the greater community.”

—Michelle Ducharme

SPLURGE YR LIFE BY DOING SOMETHING YOU LOVE. My husband Paul is a musician. He says that the concept of talent is overrated because ‘talent’ is really the gift of love. ‘Talent’ happens when yr in love with something and you devote yr life to it and its yr love of it that makes you want to keep doing it, its yr love of it which helps you overcome the obstacles along the way, and its yr love of it that begets a talent for it. — Suzan-Lori Parks ’85, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, commencement address, 2001