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.

Q: The story makes clear the “big unknown” remains the price and “how much people are willing to spend to cut a day or so off of a bout of flu.” The story reports that Genentech, the drug’s manufacturer, said it’s too early to comment on the drug’s U.S. price. The story also notes that in Japan, where the drug was invented, it “sells for the equivalent of about $43.50.” The story uses terms like “a little more than a day” and “nearly a day” and “substantially” to describe the drug’s reduction in flu symptoms, fever, and coughing and sneezing, respectively. It does not explain, as the news release does, that: “Similar efficacy results were seen between baloxavir marboxil and [Tamiflu] in relation to duration of symptoms and fever reduction.” In other words, on the symptom front, both drugs were the same. According to the news release, a difference was seen in the length of time the virus was shed from the body (presumably through coughing and sneezing): 24 hours for baloxavir marboxil verses 72 hours for Tamiflu. The news release also states that there was also a difference seen in the level of virus in the nose and throat, but it provides no precise numbers. It is not known whether this benefit translates into less infection transmission, and the story should have made that clear. The news release issued by Genentech about the FDA’s decision to grant priority review describes baloxavir marboxil’s most common side effects: diarrhea, bronchitis, nausea and sinusitis. The news release also states that overall incidence of adverse events seen in patients taking baloxavir marboxil were lower than those seen in both the placebo group and the group taking Tamiflu. The STAT News story does not mention any potential harms. This evidence comes from the randomized phase III Capstone-1 study the FDA will review, which included 1,436 people in the US and Japan. It excluded people older than 64. The news story does not note this exclusion, nor does it state a key problem with this study: It has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal (instead, a study abstract was released as part of ID Week 2017). This means the full data analysis has never been seen by anyone other than the researchers. We explained why this is important in February 2018, when we discussed news coverage of the drug’s approval in Japan. The 2017-2018 flu season was the worst the US had experienced in nearly a decade. The flu impacted the entire country, and was responsible for 172 pediatric deaths. The news article did not use these or any other flu-related statistics to increase fear about the flu and, in turn, the need for this medication. The article includes two sources: Mark Eisner, Genentech’s VP of product development for immunology, infectious diseases and ophthalmology and Richard Webby, head of the World Health Organization’s influenza collaborating center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Eisner’s affiliation with Genentech, the drug’s manufacturer, is clearly noted. Webby does not appear to have any conflicts of interest. The article would have been stronger if it had included a third source who commented on what–if anything–is known about whether reducing the duration of symptoms leads to reduced levels of transmission that result in fewer people contracting the flu and fewer deaths. The story explains that the only other drug approved to treat the flu is Tamiflu, which is not widely used. The writer explains that both drugs need to be taken within 48 hours of symptom onset and that baloxavir marboxil is a single one-time dose, while Tamiflu must be taken twice daily for five days. It is clear from the story that the FDA is expected to decide by the end of the year whether to approve this new flu medication. The story explains that it’s been more than 20 years since a new class of flu drug has been developed and marketed. (It is available in Japan.) The catalyst for the story was a news release issued by Genentech about the FDA granting priority review of baloxavir marboxil, but the story does not use direct quotes from the news release.

A: A flu drug — shown to reduce the duration of symptoms — could upend treatment in U.S.
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Q: On June 21 2020, the Facebook page “The Runic Witch” shared the following meme, which described a garden in England “dedicated entirely to plants that … can kill you”:At the bottom of the meme was a photograph of a black gate, the archway of which read “The Poison Garden.” Both doors featured a skull and crossbones symbol and the words “these plants can kill.” Text at the top read:There’s a garden in England dedicated entirely to plants that are deadly and can kill you. It’s the most dangerous garden in the world. It holds over 100 killers [such as hemlock], strychnine, and nightshade.The Alnwick Garden is a “complex of formal gardens” not far from the Scottish border. It contains a number of sub-sections, including a massive treehouse, a cherry orchard, a bamboo labyrinth, and water features:Number nine on the above “Map Key” is marked to the left of the center fountain, and a rendering of the iron gates seen in the meme is visible.The Poison Garden was added in 2005, and a page on the Garden’s visitor site says of the deadlier plant section:The Alnwick Garden plays host to the small but deadly Poison Garden—filled exclusively with around 100 toxic, intoxicating, and narcotic plants. The boundaries of the Poison Garden are kept behind black iron gates, only open on guided tours.Visitors are strictly prohibited from smelling, touching, or tasting any plants, although some people still occasionally faint from inhaling toxic fumes while walking in the garden.An archived version of the page shed a bit more light onto the garden’s creation:It’s not often that the Home Office becomes involved with plants in the setting of a public garden, but in this instance a number of the ‘inmates’ have to have their very own license in order to be there at all.Many of the plants are already well-known for their medicinal properties, but as its creator, the Duchess of Northumberland said:‘I wondered why so many gardens around the world focused on the healing power of plants rather than their ability to kill… I felt that most children I knew would be more interested in hearing how a plant killed, how long it would take you to die if you ate it and how gruesome and painful the death might be.’Another since updated section, titled “Intoxicating inhabitants,” described some of the plants growing in the garden as the ones mentioned in the meme:There are over 100 plants of varying deadliness grown in the Poison Garden. Some of the plants are beautiful despite being deadly, and other look so harmless it is hard to imagine their dangerous, even fatal, qualities.Nux vomica’s Latin name implies much, but it perhaps rings more bells as strychnine. Interestingly, hemlock, a poison in its own right, can be used as an antidote to Strychnine, but don’t tell Socrates, who was sent to his death with a cup of hemlock.Those of a certain age will be familiar with Castor Oil, which is made from the plant Ricinus communis, but a single seed from the same plant will kill an adult in the most horrible way. Ricin causes nausea, severe vomiting, convulsions and subsequent disintegration of the kidneys, liver and spleen…In 2014, Smithsonian Magazine profiled the Poison Garden and spoke to Jane Percy, the Duchess of Northumberland about the macabre project’s inspiration:The duchess thought she might want to include an apothecary garden, but a trip to Italy set her on a slightly different course. After visiting the infamous Medici poison garden, the duchess became enthralled with the idea of creating a garden of plants that could kill instead of heal. Another trip—this one to the archeological site of the largest hospital in medieval Scotland, where the duchess learned about soporific sponges soaked in henbane, opium and hemlock used to anesthetize amputees during 15th-century surgeries—reinforced her interest in creating a garden of lethal plants.“I thought, ‘This is a way to interest children,'” she says. “Children don’t care that aspirin comes from a bark of a tree. What’s really interesting is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.”[…]“What’s extraordinary about the plants is that it’s the most common ones that people don’t know are killers,” the duchess says. Visitors are often surprised to learn that the laurel hedge, nearly ubiquitous in English gardens, can be highly toxic. But some visitors have had experience with laurel’s sinister side—the duchess has heard a few talk about how, after loading up their cars with pruned laurel leaves to take to the dump, drivers have fallen asleep behind the wheel of their car from the toxic fumes the branches emit.In the meme, plants in the nightshade family (which also contains potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant) were mentioned. In the article, a more specific explanation appeared alongside a detail about the garden’s other interesting inhabitants:As part of the Poison Garden’s educational mission, the duchess grows a variety of drugs, from cannabis to cocaine (derived from the leaves of the coca plant), which she and garden guides use as a jumping-off point for drug education. “It’s a way of educating children without having them realize they’re being educated,” she says.Other poisonous plants might be less well-known to visitors, but are no less potent. One of the duchess’s favorite plants is Brugmansia, or angel’s trumpet, a member of the Solanaceae family (which includes deadly nightshade) that grows in the wild in South America. “It’s an amazing aphrodisiac before it kills you,” she says, explaining that Victorian ladies would often keep a flower from the plant on their card tables and add small amounts of its pollen to their tea to incite an LSD-like trip. “[Angel’s trumpet] is an amazing way to die because it’s quite pain-free,” the duchess says. “A great killer is usually an incredible aphrodisiac.”As such, the “Poison Garden” meme was both popular and largely accurate. The Poison Garden is a sub-attraction as part of the larger Alnwick Garden, and it is grown behind the depicted, imposing iron gates. Among the deadly plants in it are hemlock, Nux vomica (strychnine), and Ricinus communis (ricin).Comments

A: There's a garden in England dedicated entirely to plants that are deadly and can kill you. It's the most dangerous garden in the world. It holds over 100 killers [such as hemlock], strychnine, and nightshade.
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Q: New Jersey’s East Point Lighthouse has been lighting up Delaware Bay for the better part of two centuries. But those same waters that the lighthouse helped illuminate might bring about its demise. With even a moderate-term fix likely to cost $3 million or more, New Jersey officials are considering what to do to save the lighthouse. Nancy Patterson, president of the Maurice River Historical Society, says something needs to be done now. State and local governments routinely shore up the perimeter of the lighthouse property with 3,000-pound (1360-kilogram) sand bags and hastily bulldozed earthen walls. During normal conditions, the bay is about 40 yards (37 meters) from the lighthouse; aerial photos from 1940 show at least four times as much beach between the lighthouse and the bay as there is now. And during storms, the surf pounds against an earthen wall just 10 yards (9 meters) from the lighthouse’s front steps. “This lighthouse is in incredible danger; it’s getting worse and worse and worse,” Patterson said. “The water is right there, often within feet of the lighthouse.” She recently led a save-the-lighthouse rally to call attention to its plight and push the state Department of Environmental Protection to do something to save it before it falls into the bay. It’s a threat affecting lighthouses around the country and the world, including those in low-lying areas being inundated by water, as well as those on bluffs or cliffs being eroded by storms and rising sea levels. “It’s happening faster than anybody had predicted,” said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society in Hansville, Washington. While some of the lighthouses continue to be relied upon for navigation, others have been supplanted more modern technology, and are treasured more for historical and tourism purposes. Climate change hastened by manmade greenhouse gases is not only melting polar ice, adding to sea levels, but the warmer waters are expanding and some land formations sinking. Globally, sea levels have been rising over the past century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In New Jersey, seas have risen by 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) over the past 100 years, said Benjamin Horton, a Rutgers University professor and leading expert on climate change and sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said. Horton and other Rutgers researchers project that by 2050, seas off New Jersey will rise by an additional 1.4 feet (0.4 meters). Tim Harrison is the editor of Lighthouse Digest, a Maine-based publication that maintains a “Doomsday List” of 53 lighthouses around the U.S. deemed to be in danger of being lost due to storms, erosion or other causes. “Lighthouses were built for one purpose: to save lives,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to step up save these lighthouses.” Rising seas have already forced the relocation of several lighthouses. In 1999, the National Park Service moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, North Carolina, 2,900 feet inland, at a cost of $11.8 million. In 1993, the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, Rhode Island, was moved 300 feet inland. In 2014 the Cape San Blas Lighthouse was moved from the edge of a storm-prone peninsula on Florida’s Gulf Coast to a park in Port St. Joe. A year later, the Gay Head Lighthouse on Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard was moved 129 feet back from an eroding cliff. Others were not so lucky. The Galveston Jetty Lighthouse in Texas and the Sabine Bank Lighthouse in Louisiana were lost to storms or rising seas, and the Kauhola Point Lighthouse on Hawaii’s Big Island was demolished after erosion nearby was deemed too severe to save it, Harrison said. Lighthouses around the country considered to be in danger from rising seas include the Sand Island Lighthouse at the mouth of Mobile Bay in Alabama, the Morris Island Lighthouse near Charleston, South Carolina, and the New Point Comfort Lighthouse in Virginia. Around the world, encroaching seas are drawing nearer to the Orfordness Lighthouse in Suffolk, England; the Troubridge Island Lighthouse in South Australia; and the Kiipsaar Lighthouse in Estonia. In 2010, the Half Moon Caye Lighthouse in Belize was destroyed by a storm. There are few easy answers, financially or scientifically. The East Point Lighthouse is already on the highest spit of land around, which is only a few inches above sea level, so moving it is not an option. Nor is constantly dumping and plowing more sand in front of it. Patterson wants some sort of bulkhead or barrier erected between the bay and the lighthouse to blunt the force of the waves. Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, acknowledges the lighthouse has been “very vulnerable to storms due to erosion” for years. And he realizes the sandbags the state and local governments keep plopping on the shoreline are a stop-gap measure at best. But while affirming the state’s interest in saving the lighthouse, he notes that moving or protecting it with rock-filled cages could cost several million dollars. Because of the high cost of moving or protecting the lighthouses, volunteer preservation groups often partner with governments to maintain them; one has spent at least $5 million on the Morris Island Lighthouse in South Carolina. And cash-strapped governments often can’t spare funds to save lighthouses. Patterson, the New Jersey lighthouse advocate, says a barrier needs to be built near the East Point Lighthouse immediately. “This history matters,” she said. “We need to do something — now — while there’s still something to save.” ___ Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC ___ This story has been updated to correct that photos from 1940 were aerial photos, not satellite photos.

A:
Rising sea levels threatening historic lighthouses.
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