http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/dennys-offers-partner-burger-king-mcdonalds-being-mcchicken-166595
Our newspaper had a full-page ad from Denny’s this morning riffing on the Peaceburger offer from Burger King. Pretty clever 
patsmom, that was clever!
denny’s has a great niche,sadly I have never been to a denny’s where the food and service was not sub par. and I have a low bar set! I guess it is hard to staff a restaurant that is open 24/7 especially when it is not a place to earn a great income. and it attracts a lot of drunks and shady folk especially in the middle of the night.
“I feel like the FDA is a very political organization and I have no faith in them whatsoever.”
Seriously? BB is right. They are rather unpolitical. Believe me, if they were in the palm of Big Pharma, they wouldn’t have the restrictive, years-of-testing, stringent standards they do for many, many things.
But it’s easier to think Evil Big Pharma.
One of the things to think about is that the rigid testing that the FDA requires benefits the pharm companies, too, because if they released a drug without that kind of testing, and it caused problems, they would be toast in terms of laswuits, whereas at least with the testing required to get it approved, they have some backing to say "hey, wait a minute, we did due diligence, and we thought it was safe’.
The politics is there, though. The cosmetics industry is a classic example, cosmetics companies are allowed to self certify their products for safety, and there are many ingredients in cosmetics that are seriously questionable. There aren’t even standards for labelling, cosmetic companies don’t even have to list all the ingredients.
Where politics really comes in often is in drugs revolving around sexuality or things like morning after pills, where the FDS panel of doctors recommended they be made legal, and later over the counter, and the FDA backed off because the religious right and their political allies refused to allow it to be made legal (anyone remember when they tried to get RU486 approved 30 years ago? There was no doubt it was effective, there were no doubts about safety, it wasn’t approved because of moral objections). Likewise, when the whole battle over the HPV vaccine came up, and the FDA at leaat initially overrode the recommendation of the panel that it be routinely given to young women, because the religious conservatives claimed it would promote promiscuity.
The other political portion is the FDA refusal to clamp down on advertising of drugs. When I was growing up, you didn’t see prescription drug ads on tv the way you do today, and it wasn’t in print, either. These days every other commercial seems to be for some prescription drug, whether it is Viagra and Cialis, or Humira and the drugs for AFIB and the like, or anti arthritis drugs. Among other things, it is causing patients to demand the higher priced drugs, when older generation drugs and generics would work just as well. I am expecting to see ads soon for the new class of cholesterol lowering drugs, that say 'unlike statins, this lowers LDL and doesn’t have side effects, so you can be there for your great grandkid"…and said drug is 14k a year. It also has failed to clamp down on the cozy relationship between doctors and the pharm industry, either, where doctors are influenced through junkets and the salesman buying the office lunches and such, to use certain products.
My skepticism relating to the inter-workings of the FDA dates to when I closely followed the attempts to get the medical device Menaflex approved. H had a knee surgery relating to his meniscus that was not particularly effective, so research on new devices coming on the market was of interest to me. I could not have picked a worse approval process to follow as the whole thing ended up in a litigious debacle.
Appparently the device was originally slated for “fast-track” approval under 510(K) rules despite FDA scientists filing formal rejection letters saying it did not qualify. There was a lot of wrangling internally and after the “fast-track” approval was rejected by the FDA scientists 3 times, the manufacturer enlisted the help of their local lawmakers (including senators) to assist them.
Long story short it seems that the scientists were circumvented by convening a " special panel" that would review the application. The manufacturer did not want any knee surgeons on the panel contending they would be biased since the product could possibly reduce the number of knee surgeries. Menaflex was approved and then within a year for reasons unknown to me the FDA reversed itself saying the device should never have been approved. I stopped following the product at the point when it was revealed state lawmakers were involved on behalf of the manufacturer, but I understand that as of last year the matter is still the subject of contentious litigation. The Wall Street Journal reported on the matter during the initial internal wrangling:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123629954783946701
As to “evil big pharma” - they are not my words. I take no prescription medications at all and will postpone closely following pharmaceuticals until such time as I do. But I do research any medications that are prescribed to me or my family on a one time basis.