Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

The lung cancer rate dropped by 2.6 percent per year among men and 1.1 percent per year among women, between 2005 and 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, using the most recent available data. The largest decline was seen in adults aged 35 to 44, with a 6.4 percent drop per year among men and a 5.9 percent decrease for women in that age group, the study said. “This is a big deal,” said Clifford Hudis, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. But Hudis added that there is still much more work to be done to reduce smoking given all the health problems it creates in addition to lung cancer. More than half of American men and over a third of women were smokers on January 11, 1964, when Dr. Luther Terry delivered the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health outlining the links between tobacco use, lung cancer and death. Since the surgeon general’s 1964 report, the prevalence of smoking by U.S. adults has been cut by half, the CDC said. “I’m not satisfied with reducing smoking,” Hudis said. “It should be eliminated. There’s no upside to it.”  Up to 90 percent of lung cancer cases are linked to cigarette smoking and second-hand smoke, the CDC said. The CDC, whose officials call the fight to reduce tobacco use a “winnable battle,” promotes increased funding for anti-smoking campaigns. In 2007, the CDC recommended spending $3.7 billion on state-level anti-smoking campaigns. But in 2010, states spent $640 million, only 2.4 percent of the money they received from settlements in lawsuits against tobacco companies, the CDC said. More than half of American men and over a third of women were smokers on January 11, 1964, when Dr. Luther Terry delivered the first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health outlining the links between tobacco use, lung cancer and death.
Lung cancer rates decline for U.S. men, women: study.

But that was before being told by doctors in August that he had a degenerative spinal condition that could have left him paralyzed. Hurley returned to work full time Wednesday, less than two weeks after having surgery to replace two disks in his neck with artificial ones. He expects to make a full recovery, but says as health scares go, this was terrifying. “I started worrying and having a lot of anxiety about my health and my ability to get back to being myself,” he said. “You start playing worst-case scenarios in your head.” Hurley said doctors told him the condition was part hereditary and part a result of years of the wear and tear associated with being a life-long athlete. He said he was hoping to deal with the discomfort and tingling he was feeling through physical therapy or maybe an injection, but doctors quickly told him that he needed immediate surgery and that any hard fall or bump could leave him paralyzed. He had the surgery on Sept. 6, with the doctor using an incision in his throat to get to his spine. He said he was told that for experts, it’s a relatively routine procedure. The 46-year-old coach said he felt better immediately, but still has some restrictions for the next month, such as being prohibited from flying or lifting anything heavier than 10 pounds. Hurley, known for his animated coaching style, said he’s kept recruits informed and is very confident the situation won’t have any long-term effects on his ability to do his job the way he always has done it. But, he said the first major health issue has changed his perspective on life. “How important my faith is to me was reinforced; how important my family is to me was reinforced,” he said. “And just how important I am to my players, to not just succeed and excel in their careers. My true sense and purpose as a coach came into much clearer focus for me.” His players gave him a warm welcome back on Wednesday. He said that meant a lot to him, but didn’t make him go any easier on them. “Any of like that feeling sorry for me or good will toward the coach returning from injury went out the door when I got on guys for their lack of defensive prowess,” he said. “Yeah, all that love is gone.” UConn opens its season Nov. 8 against Sacred Heart.
UConn men’s coach Hurley back at work after spinal surgery.

The finding, made by British and Swedish scientists, could pave the way for the development of a new treatment for the estimated 450,000 people worldwide who have multi drug-resistant (MDR) or extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB. In a study in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal on Thursday, researchers said more than half of 30 drug-resistant TB patients treated with a transfusion of their own bone marrow stem cells were cured of the disease after six months. “The results ... show that the current challenges and difficulties of treating MDR-TB are not insurmountable, and they bring a unique opportunity with a fresh solution to treat hundreds of thousands of people who die unnecessarily,” said TB expert Alimuddin Zumla at University College London, who co-led the study. TB, which infects the lungs and can spread from one person to another through coughing and sneezing, is often falsely thought of as a disease of the past. In recent years, drug-resistant strains of the disease have spread around the world, batting off standard antibiotic drug treatments. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in Eastern Europe, Asia and South Africa 450,000 people have MDR-TB, and around half of these will fail to respond to existing treatments. TB bacteria trigger an inflammatory response in immune cells and surrounding lung tissue that can cause immune dysfunction and tissue damage. Bone-marrow stem cells are known to migrate to areas of lung injury and inflammation and repair damaged tissue. Since they also modify the body’s immune response and could boost the clearance of TB bacteria, Zumla and his colleague, Markus Maeurer from Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital, wanted to test them in patients with the disease. In a phase 1 trial, 30 patients with either MDR or XDR TB aged between 21 and 65 who were receiving standard TB antibiotic treatment were also given an infusion of around 10 million of their own stem cells. The cells were obtained from the patient’s own bone marrow, then grown into large numbers in the laboratory before being re-transfused into the same patient, the researchers explained. During six months of follow-up, the researchers found that the infusion treatment was generally safe and well tolerated, with no serious side effects recorded. The most common non-serious side effects were high cholesterol levels, nausea, low white blood cell counts and diarrhea. Although a phase 1 trial is primarily designed only to test a treatment’s safety, the scientists said further analyses of the results showed that 16 patients treated with stem cells were deemed cured at 18 months compared with only five of 30 TB patients not treated with stem cells. Maeurer stressed that further trials with more patients and longer follow-up were needed to better establish how safe and effective the stem cell treatment was. But if future tests were successful, he said, it could become a viable extra new treatment for patients with MDR-TB who do not respond to conventional drug treatment or those with severe lung damage.

Bone marrow stem cells could defeat drug-resistant tuberculosis.