Editorial standards

The standard this site is written to

Tan Lines is an independent publication. Every article here is written to one editorial standard, and this page is that standard, set down in the open so any reader — or any regulator, dermatologist, or skeptical journalist — can hold the work to it.

Who writes this

Tan Lines is written and edited under a single masthead rather than under individual bylines. The name on every article is the publication’s, and the standard on this page is the author of record. We claim no medical or clinical credentials, and we never borrow them: nothing here is written in the voice of a doctor giving advice, because it is not.

We are independent of the industry we cover. Tan Lines is not affiliated with, funded by, or speaking for any manufacturer, vendor, clinic, or any of the companies whose drugs appear in these pages. It sells nothing.

How we report

Every article is built from primary sources — peer-reviewed literature, patent filings, regulatory records, and companies’ own disclosures — and the specific claims are checked against those sources before anything is published. Dates, names, and numbers are meant to be verifiable; where a patent, trial, or approval is cited, it is a real one you can look up.

Every article is dated. Where the evidence is thin, the article says so. Where a popular claim is wrong, the article says that too — including claims made by people selling things. For the receptor-level science underneath the history, we point to our sister reference,melanocortin.com.

What we never publish

No sourcing, suppliers, dosing, or usage guidance for unapproved compounds — not framed as harm reduction, not framed as history. No commerce on this domain. No medical advice. Melanotan II is not approved by any regulator for any use, and this site treats it as the cautionary tale it is, not a manual for it.

Where we’re opinionated, and say so

Tan Lines holds one openly stated position: that the world still needs what the original researchers were chasing — a rigorously tested, approved medicine that gives skin durable protection from ultraviolet damage. When we argue that case, we label it as what it is: hope, clearly marked, kept separate from the reporting. The reasoning behind it lives on the about page.

Corrections

When we find an error, or one is brought to our attention, we fix it and note the date of any material change. Freshness is only signalled when the substance of an article actually changed — we do not restamp dates to look current. An accurate record is worth more than a fresh-looking one.