Hopkins Retreats from Cosmetics Venture

Recently, we posted about Johns Hopkins Medicine's unique collaboration with a cosmetics manufacturer.

After the relationship was publicized and criticized, the Baltimore Sun reported that Johns Hopkins quickly decided to revise it. Johns Hopkins will no longer receive stock or a seat on the board of directors of the cosmetics company. Hopkins asked that company marketers "withdraw all references to JHM (Johns Hopkins Medicine) except for certain limited information - on product packages and in previously printed promotional material - that disclose JHM's consulting role," although so far the Sephora web-site's page for Klinger Advanced Aesthetics Cosmedicine has not been modified (as of April 10, 2006).

Johns Hopkins has to get some credit for deciding to rapidly retreat from some of the most questionable parts of this relationship, which was criticized for being irrelevant, and possibly at odds with the institution's mission, and for posing a (possibly unique new form of) conflict of interest.