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Sourcing safely

The questions I now think everybody should ask first

Started 9 August 2024 · 22 replies · 257 hearts · read 4.7k times

SaskiaThe Hague, NL · 9 August 2024
1.9 years ago

A question rather than an update: The questions I now think everybody should ask first

Evidence question. I would rather have an honest "we do not know" than a confident answer.

I have a practical question that turns entirely on a technical detail, and I have not been able to get a straight answer to the technical detail.

I have read the paper and I am not sure I have understood it, and I would rather say that than pretend otherwise.

If anybody has the primary source, I would be very grateful for it — I have been going round in circles.

86

SindriReykjavík, IS
#1

What I found is that a supplier with hundreds of independent results behind it is a genuinely different proposition from one with four, and the difference is not marketing.

10me too 9

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK
#2

Two things, both boring. None of us can tell you what is safe for you. And an evidence base being thin is information rather than a gap to fill with reasoning.

12

GwionBangor, UK
#3

Something worth knowing: the suppliers with a long published testing record are a small group. The wider market is mostly places with two or three results and nothing else.

12

TamsinRedruth, UK
#4

I asked for the certificate for my specific lot rather than a representative one, and the answer to that request tells you a great deal.

7

ShadeIbadan, NG
#5

What our sourcing reference pages do is say what can and cannot be verified about a supplier. That is a narrower thing than a recommendation and it is deliberately narrow.

10

TaviaPalermo, IT
#6

Gwion, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

The check I would not skip is the lot number on the vial against the lot number on the document. It takes ten seconds and it is the only check that is entirely yours.

12

OsipTbilisi, GE
#7

Coming back to what Tamsin wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Coming back to say I asked all three questions, got proper answers to all three, and that the asking was the most useful thing I did.

11

Ollie OPeterhead, UK
#8

Saying it out loud helps other people say it too. Thank you.

13me too 1

NolCork, IE
#9

Something worth stating plainly: sterility and endotoxin are separate assays and a purity certificate says nothing about either.

14

LucasSão Paulo, BR
#10

Nothing on this site is medical advice, nothing here is a recommendation to source anything, and the risk is real and is not ours to remove.

10

BramberSteyning, UK
#11

Grateful you posted rather than kept it to yourself.

14

NylaNairobi, KE
#12

The reference pages here link each shop so you can read their account against ours. We take nothing from any of them and a link is not a recommendation.

12

TemSouthend, UK
#13

Reading Lucas, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

Something I would flag about the wider market: a great many names have a handful of submissions, no consistent documentation and nothing verifiable at all behind them.

13

PerrinNice, FR
#14

My approach is to ask three questions before ordering anywhere, take the answers as data, and treat a non-answer as an answer.

9

GittaBonn, DE
#15

The plain position of this circle does not change: buying outside a prescription means no pharmacist checked your dose, no regulator inspected the line, and nobody is accountable to you. We cannot remove that.

13me too 1

SaskiaThe Hague, NL
#16

Gitta, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Everything discussed here is research-use-only material and is not approved for use in a person, and this circle says that on every thread for a reason.

11

SindriReykjavík, IS
#17

What helped me was understanding that a purity figure describes one sample on one day. It is useful and it is not a promise about the vial in front of you.

12

NazneenDhaka, BD
#18

The suppliers with regional stock and published lead times are much easier to plan around, and that is a practical difference rather than a quality claim.

9

GwionBangor, UK
#19

Reading Nazneen, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

My rule is that if I cannot get a lot-specific document, I do not proceed. That has never once been a problem with the suppliers that have pages here.

10

TamsinRedruth, UK
#20

I have nothing to add and I did not want to leave it unanswered.

7me too 6

SunilFacilitatorBirmingham, UK
#21

Gently: a mechanism is not an outcome. Three replies have moved between the two as though they were the same claim.

27

TaviaPalermo, IT
#22

I would say ask for the batch record and see what comes back. The suppliers with a real documentation process send it without a fuss.

9