Plain Jane
Just Plain Jane
H/T WRSA
stopshouting.substack.com
Jul 17, 2026
As trust in allopathic medicine and Big Pharma (tm) continues to evaporate, many people are turning to supplements and learning how to do self-care and self-treat.
Savvy readers will grasp the allusion to Canal Street in New York, infamous for its street vendors hawking counterfeit goods for cash by illegal aliens, leading to a comical and never ending cycle of raids, seizures of goods, arrests of illegal aliens and then fresh inventory appears, and the cycle begins again.
A big percentage of those people now looking to self-treat order their supplements from the biggest online retailer in the US - Amazon, who I, tongue-in-cheek consider the “Canal Street of the internet”. Here are a few reasons why buying supplements from Amazon may not be a good idea.
Amazon takes items for sale from vendors into their warehouses, scans the SKU and prepares them for distribution. It also hosts independent sellers who ship from home, and international shippers from places like India and China. You, the purchaser, have no way ahead of purchase to verify where the product you are buying came from.
It does not verify the legitimacy, efficacy or safety of any of the items listed for sale. It merely accepts them into inventory and continues to ship them, unless a counterfeit is brought to their attention.
Amazon has a “comingled” inventory system where it POOLS inventory. In other words, the counterfeit items could be pooled with legitimate items, and Amazon will ship whichever one the picker robot pulls without checking if it is a counterfeit product. Critics claim Amazon is not that motivated to deal with the counterfeiting issue because they make a sale either way.
Several big US brands have stopped selling on Amazon because of this problem. Examples include Nike and Birkenstock footwear.
Jul 17, 2026
As trust in allopathic medicine and Big Pharma (tm) continues to evaporate, many people are turning to supplements and learning how to do self-care and self-treat.
Savvy readers will grasp the allusion to Canal Street in New York, infamous for its street vendors hawking counterfeit goods for cash by illegal aliens, leading to a comical and never ending cycle of raids, seizures of goods, arrests of illegal aliens and then fresh inventory appears, and the cycle begins again.
A big percentage of those people now looking to self-treat order their supplements from the biggest online retailer in the US - Amazon, who I, tongue-in-cheek consider the “Canal Street of the internet”. Here are a few reasons why buying supplements from Amazon may not be a good idea.
Amazon takes items for sale from vendors into their warehouses, scans the SKU and prepares them for distribution. It also hosts independent sellers who ship from home, and international shippers from places like India and China. You, the purchaser, have no way ahead of purchase to verify where the product you are buying came from.
It does not verify the legitimacy, efficacy or safety of any of the items listed for sale. It merely accepts them into inventory and continues to ship them, unless a counterfeit is brought to their attention.
Amazon has a “comingled” inventory system where it POOLS inventory. In other words, the counterfeit items could be pooled with legitimate items, and Amazon will ship whichever one the picker robot pulls without checking if it is a counterfeit product. Critics claim Amazon is not that motivated to deal with the counterfeiting issue because they make a sale either way.
Several big US brands have stopped selling on Amazon because of this problem. Examples include Nike and Birkenstock footwear.
A. Be vigilant about reading labels. I no longer purchase items that are manufactured or sourced from India. There is too much corruption, inadequate surveillance, and they are out of the grasp of US litigation. FDA inspections are sporadic and inadequate to address the scale of the issue. Costco has begun stocking items from India under pressure from its Indian US based staff. Indian source items are beginning to show up everywhere on American shelves.
India is still considered the “most unsanitary place on planet earth” and has been busted for even adulterating and counterfeiting MILK for sale (link).
B. Buy supplements direct from the manufacturer, instead of through a third party platform like Amazon. This includes well known brands like NOW, Carlyle and Thorne, who have all been the victims of counterfeit items being co-mingled with their legitimate products in spite of vigorous and ongoing efforts to combat it.
Buying direct from the manufacturer’s own website ensures that the product they are shipping you is legitimate and their product.
C. Buy from US based companies that do third party quality control testing and compliance. This includes vendors that may source from outside the US, but have their products tested inside the US before packaging and selling to consumers. Examples of vendors that do third party quality control testing for things like heavy metals, and legitimate active ingredients at therapeutic concentrations include not only the big brands mentioned previously but vendors like Starwest Botanicals and Mountain Rose Herbals. These companies maintain in house quality control labs, send samples out to third party labs and voluntarily agree to third party cGMP audits (Current Good Manufacturing Practices). These are the factors you should be considering when purchasing supplements.
Be well, but be smart to be safe out there.
Resources:
US Manufacturer Mountain Rose Quality Control standards example
FDA Warning Letter Example - they are endless - beware!
The dangerous trade in fake cancer drugs
Health Risk Assessment of Lead...in pharmaceutical products
India - still the most unsanitary place on earth
Amazon has a counterfeiting problem - Youtube
Canal Street of the Inner Webz
Counterfeit or not counterfeit? Spin the wheel of chance and find out.
stopshouting.substack.com
Canal Street of the Inner Webz
Counterfeit or not counterfeit? Spin the wheel of chance and find out.
StopShoutingJul 17, 2026
As trust in allopathic medicine and Big Pharma (tm) continues to evaporate, many people are turning to supplements and learning how to do self-care and self-treat.
Savvy readers will grasp the allusion to Canal Street in New York, infamous for its street vendors hawking counterfeit goods for cash by illegal aliens, leading to a comical and never ending cycle of raids, seizures of goods, arrests of illegal aliens and then fresh inventory appears, and the cycle begins again.
A big percentage of those people now looking to self-treat order their supplements from the biggest online retailer in the US - Amazon, who I, tongue-in-cheek consider the “Canal Street of the internet”. Here are a few reasons why buying supplements from Amazon may not be a good idea.
Amazon takes items for sale from vendors into their warehouses, scans the SKU and prepares them for distribution. It also hosts independent sellers who ship from home, and international shippers from places like India and China. You, the purchaser, have no way ahead of purchase to verify where the product you are buying came from.
It does not verify the legitimacy, efficacy or safety of any of the items listed for sale. It merely accepts them into inventory and continues to ship them, unless a counterfeit is brought to their attention.
Amazon has a “comingled” inventory system where it POOLS inventory. In other words, the counterfeit items could be pooled with legitimate items, and Amazon will ship whichever one the picker robot pulls without checking if it is a counterfeit product. Critics claim Amazon is not that motivated to deal with the counterfeiting issue because they make a sale either way.
Several big US brands have stopped selling on Amazon because of this problem. Examples include Nike and Birkenstock footwear.
- Seizures of counterfeit drugs and supplements are particularly concerning, given that the majority of seizures of product were produced in very unsanitary conditions, with non-active ingredients. Healthcare distributors have unknowingly received counterfeit cancer drugs that contained only saline and starch, but the packaging looked close enough to the legitimate that it was passed off.
- Some of the legitimate supplement suppliers that sell on Amazon and have been the victim of counterfeits with labeling and packaging that looks too similar to the original to easily discern include NOW, Bausch and Lomb, Carlyle Nutritionals, PURE Encapsulations, Thorne Laboratories, and Life Extension.
- Any product produced in India is of particular concern. FDA site inspections of various manufacturing facilities have repeatedly found extreme unsanitary conditions with rodent droppings, live rodents, mold, lack of proper hygiene facilities for workers and equipment failures that released metal and plastic fragments into product, which was still processed, packaged and sold to US consumers. PBS aired an episode of an Indian eye drop line that lacked even basic sanitary conditions, resulting in deaths and permanent blindness in multiple users of their product.
FDA Announces Expanded Use of Unannounced Inspections at Foreign Manufacturing Facilities (link)
- There are a number of really great herbal products that I no longer recommend - not because they don’t work, but because I am unable to find a safe source of them. An example is Hedysari - Hedysarum polybotrys a tough root grown in China used for nerve regeneration (link). There are no US grown sources of this plant, and there are no adequate safeguards for certifying the “cleanliness” of the product that are personally satisfactory to me. The distilled extracts used in research that have had trace heavy metals and other impurities removed are not available for public purchase (yet).
“Heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium frequently contaminate Chinese herbal products sold in the U.S. This occurs because plants absorb pollutants from contaminated soil, irrigation water, and nearby industrial sites. In the U.S., herbs are regulated as dietary supplements, meaning pre-market safety testing by the FDA is not required”
Chinese herb recalled due to concerns over elevated lead and cadmium (link)
StopShouting
Canal Street of the Inner Webz
Counterfeit or not counterfeit? Spin the wheel of chance and find out.
StopShoutingJul 17, 2026
As trust in allopathic medicine and Big Pharma (tm) continues to evaporate, many people are turning to supplements and learning how to do self-care and self-treat.
Savvy readers will grasp the allusion to Canal Street in New York, infamous for its street vendors hawking counterfeit goods for cash by illegal aliens, leading to a comical and never ending cycle of raids, seizures of goods, arrests of illegal aliens and then fresh inventory appears, and the cycle begins again.
A big percentage of those people now looking to self-treat order their supplements from the biggest online retailer in the US - Amazon, who I, tongue-in-cheek consider the “Canal Street of the internet”. Here are a few reasons why buying supplements from Amazon may not be a good idea.
Amazon takes items for sale from vendors into their warehouses, scans the SKU and prepares them for distribution. It also hosts independent sellers who ship from home, and international shippers from places like India and China. You, the purchaser, have no way ahead of purchase to verify where the product you are buying came from.
It does not verify the legitimacy, efficacy or safety of any of the items listed for sale. It merely accepts them into inventory and continues to ship them, unless a counterfeit is brought to their attention.
Amazon has a “comingled” inventory system where it POOLS inventory. In other words, the counterfeit items could be pooled with legitimate items, and Amazon will ship whichever one the picker robot pulls without checking if it is a counterfeit product. Critics claim Amazon is not that motivated to deal with the counterfeiting issue because they make a sale either way.
Several big US brands have stopped selling on Amazon because of this problem. Examples include Nike and Birkenstock footwear.
- Seizures of counterfeit drugs and supplements are particularly concerning, given that the majority of seizures of product were produced in very unsanitary conditions, with non-active ingredients. Healthcare distributors have unknowingly received counterfeit cancer drugs that contained only saline and starch, but the packaging looked close enough to the legitimate that it was passed off.
- Some of the legitimate supplement suppliers that sell on Amazon and have been the victim of counterfeits with labeling and packaging that looks too similar to the original to easily discern include NOW, Bausch and Lomb, Carlyle Nutritionals, PURE Encapsulations, Thorne Laboratories, and Life Extension.
- Any product produced in India is of particular concern. FDA site inspections of various manufacturing facilities have repeatedly found extreme unsanitary conditions with rodent droppings, live rodents, mold, lack of proper hygiene facilities for workers and equipment failures that released metal and plastic fragments into product, which was still processed, packaged and sold to US consumers. PBS aired an episode of an Indian eye drop line that lacked even basic sanitary conditions, resulting in deaths and permanent blindness in multiple users of their product.
FDA Announces Expanded Use of Unannounced Inspections at Foreign Manufacturing Facilities (link)
- There are a number of really great herbal products that I no longer recommend - not because they don’t work, but because I am unable to find a safe source of them. An example is Hedysari - Hedysarum polybotrys a tough root grown in China used for nerve regeneration (link). There are no US grown sources of this plant, and there are no adequate safeguards for certifying the “cleanliness” of the product that are personally satisfactory to me. The distilled extracts used in research that have had trace heavy metals and other impurities removed are not available for public purchase (yet).
“Heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium frequently contaminate Chinese herbal products sold in the U.S. This occurs because plants absorb pollutants from contaminated soil, irrigation water, and nearby industrial sites. In the U.S., herbs are regulated as dietary supplements, meaning pre-market safety testing by the FDA is not required”
Chinese herb recalled due to concerns over elevated lead and cadmium (link)
A. Be vigilant about reading labels. I no longer purchase items that are manufactured or sourced from India. There is too much corruption, inadequate surveillance, and they are out of the grasp of US litigation. FDA inspections are sporadic and inadequate to address the scale of the issue. Costco has begun stocking items from India under pressure from its Indian US based staff. Indian source items are beginning to show up everywhere on American shelves.
India is still considered the “most unsanitary place on planet earth” and has been busted for even adulterating and counterfeiting MILK for sale (link).
B. Buy supplements direct from the manufacturer, instead of through a third party platform like Amazon. This includes well known brands like NOW, Carlyle and Thorne, who have all been the victims of counterfeit items being co-mingled with their legitimate products in spite of vigorous and ongoing efforts to combat it.
Buying direct from the manufacturer’s own website ensures that the product they are shipping you is legitimate and their product.
C. Buy from US based companies that do third party quality control testing and compliance. This includes vendors that may source from outside the US, but have their products tested inside the US before packaging and selling to consumers. Examples of vendors that do third party quality control testing for things like heavy metals, and legitimate active ingredients at therapeutic concentrations include not only the big brands mentioned previously but vendors like Starwest Botanicals and Mountain Rose Herbals. These companies maintain in house quality control labs, send samples out to third party labs and voluntarily agree to third party cGMP audits (Current Good Manufacturing Practices). These are the factors you should be considering when purchasing supplements.
Be well, but be smart to be safe out there.
Resources:
US Manufacturer Mountain Rose Quality Control standards example
FDA Warning Letter Example - they are endless - beware!
The dangerous trade in fake cancer drugs
Health Risk Assessment of Lead...in pharmaceutical products
India - still the most unsanitary place on earth
Amazon has a counterfeiting problem - Youtube
