TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Activists in Arkansas accused Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of sending constituents “cease-and-desist” letters. But while it’s true that at least one member of the group received one, it is unclear how many constituents at large have as well. A spokesperson for Cotton’s office, Caroline Rabbitt Tabler, confirmed the existence of the letters, saying that they were issued “under extreme circumstances.” She also said that it was rare to send any constituent such a letter. There has been no confirmed tally of how many times it has happened. The letters began getting attention when the liberal group Ozark Indivisible posted a picture of one on Twitter on 17 January 2018, along with a message taunting the senator: #TraitorTommy @TomCottonAR scared of his constituents calling so he’s sending out cease and desist letters. You’re too [chicken] to lead CIA if you can’t even listen to constituents! #arpx #TraitorTommy @TomCottonAR scared of his constituents calling so he’s sending out cease and desist letters. You’re too 🐔 to lead CIA if you can’t even listen to constituents! #arpx pic.twitter.com/N1HAGCmbW6 — Ozark Indivisible (@OZRKIndivisible) January 18, 2018  The letter stated: This letter is immediate notification that all communication must cease and desist immediately with all offices of US Senator Tom Cotton. All other contact will be deemed harassment and will be reported to the United States Capitol Police. The letters themselves, however, are not recent; the one posted by Ozark Indivisible was dated 17 October 2017. A Fayetteville resident, Stacey Lane, identified herself as the recipient of the letter posted online. Rabbitt Tabler said Cotton’s office did not accuse her of saying anything threatening but did not go into detail on why it sent her the letter. Ozark Indivisible confirmed to us on 19 January 2018 that Lane is a member of their organization. They also disputed reports that Lane threatened anyone or called a staffer a “cunt.” The group added: There have been others who have received the letters, but they do not want to come forward. They are not OI members. According to reports, “an unspecified number of individuals” received letters that month. Rabbitt Tabler said in a statement that they are “only used under extreme circumstances”: Senator Cotton is always happy to hear from Arkansans and encourages everyone to contact his offices to express their thoughts, concerns, and opinions. In order to maintain a safe work environment, if an employee of Senator Cotton receives repeated communications that are harassing and vulgar, or any communication that contains a threat, our policy is to notify the U.S. Capitol Police’s Threat Assessment Section and, in accordance with their guidance, send a cease and desist letter to the individual making the harassing or threatening communication. Another person, who did not identify themselves, told the Arkansas Times that they received a similar letter. They said: I believe if Tom Cotton’s office were to respond as to why they sent this letter, I think they just honestly don’t want to listen to any citizen’s opposing view or hear the numerous grave concerns U.S. citizens have about the serious & ongoing attack on our Democracy and past election cycle in which a foreign, hostile Russian government interfered, they don’t want U.S. citizens to call and speak their mind and truth in a very direct manner and they obviously don’t want to be held accountable for their words and actions while serving all the people in this nation. I may have used unprofessional and unbecoming language at times as the anxiety and stress of what I’m witnessing is at times too great a burden to control and I have vehemently expressed my righteous anger at Senator Cotton’s complicitness with this harmful regime. Cotton, whose current term in office runs through 2020, has come under criticism from his constituents in the past. During February and April 2017 town hall events, he was pelted with questions regarding various issues and hit with chants that included, “Do your job.”

SOLUTION: "Sen. Tom Cotton's office has sent ""cease-and-desist"" letters to constituents ordering them not to contact him."

PROBLEM: Although some of these infections can be treated easily, others - like the superbug MRSA and other drug-resistant bugs - can be fatal or affect patients’ health very seriously, taking several months of costly hospital care and medication to beat. A survey by the European Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control (ECDC) found that on any given day, one in 18 patients in European hospitals has at least one hospital-acquired infection - amounting to around 3.2 million patients per year. “Healthcare-associated infections pose a major public health problem and a threat to European patients,” said Marc Sprenger, director of the Stockholm-based ECDC. He said many of these infections could be prevented by well thought-out, sustained and multi-pronged prevention and control programs and he urged hospitals to step up the fight. “Such programs, as well as prudent use of antibiotics, will help all actors involved to protect the patients of European hospitals,” he said in a statement. The ECDC warned last year that doctors are increasingly having to turn to last-ditch antibiotics due to growing drug-resistant superbug infections in Europe - many of them acquired in hospitals. The latest survey, which covered 1,000 hospitals in 30 European countries, found the highest rates of hospital-acquired infections were among patients admitted to intensive care units, where 19.5 percent of patients had at least one bug they had picked up from the hospital. The most common types of infection are respiratory tract infections such as pneumonia and infections of the bloodstream. These are often caused by Klebsiella pneumonia and E. coli bacteria, both of which have shown an ability to develop resistance to some of the most powerful antibiotics. Among a total 15,000 reported healthcare-associated infections, surgical site infections and urinary tract infections are also common. Many of the infections are also found to be drug-resistant “superbugs”, the survey showed. Among all infections with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in which full testing was carried out, more than 40 percent were reported as resistant to methicillin - in other words they were MRSA infections, the ECDC said. Worldwide, MRSA infects an estimated 53 million people annually and costs more than $20 billion a year to treat. It kills around 20,000 people a year in the United States and a similar number in Europe. EU health and consumer affairs commissioner Paola Testori Coggi said the findings of the European survey were “worrying” and urged health authorities to do more to protect patients in hospital and to step up the fight against antibiotic resistance. Drug resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them. Experts say hospitals are often guilty of overusing antibiotics, giving them as “blanket” treatments before full testing has established which drugs are really needed.

SOLUTION: Three million Europeans catch infections in hospital annually.

PROBLEM: It’s too early to have a meaningful discussion of costs. The story does not provide a lot of hard data on benefits, and we would have liked to have seen more. For example, it says that “about half of their scar tissue dissolved and the reduction in scar size appears to get bigger after the first six months.” But we appreciated some of the specific details it does provide, including: “Marbán says the amount of new heart tissue that grew was not subtle. [On average] “22 grams (about .78 ounces) of new heart tissue grew,” which he says is quite remarkable considering this had never been done before and the average weight of the part of the heart that is responsible for pumping the blood through the body is about 150 grams (about 5.3 ounces).” Having said that however, the story misses an important point. The patients treated with the stem cells did not have an improvement in their overall heart function. So while there appeared to be a considerable amount of regenerated heart muscle, it did not make any difference in the performance of the heart so that patients did not likely see any benefit to the procedure. The story at least mentioned harms. Another story on the study, by WebMD, did not. This one says, “After 12 months, researchers report only one patient appeared to have a serious side effect that may have been connected to the experimental cells.” Competing coverage discussed a broader group of patients who had bad outcomes, although it is not clear that all of those outcomes were a result of the treatment. Pinpointing the cause of a side effect can be tricky, and given the lead researcher’s financial interest in this stem cell therapy, we think stories should err on the side of providing more information about potential harms. The story did a better job than some of the other coverage of the study in explaining exactly what this study entailed and the study’s limitations. The story says, for example, “She cautions that this procedure has to be tested on many more patients and they have to be observed for longer periods than in the current study, but she says these results are all very positive.” The story does not engage in disease mongering. It makes it clear that this was a study in a particular group of patients, not just any patient with heart disease. “To qualify for this clinical trial, patients had to have suffered a recent heart attack and “had to have a significant amount of damage to begin with and weren’t squeezing [blood into the body] as well as they should have, says Dr. Peter Johnston, one of the study authors who injected the new heart cells into patients treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital.”  The story could have sought a little wider circle of independent experts. But we thought the reporter elicited good comments from Sonia Skarlatos, Ph.D and deputy director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which funded the study. We have to give an “unsatisfactory” here, though, because the story failed to mention the financial interest that the lead researcher has in the stem cell therapy. The press release for the study mentions this, as does a competing WebMD story. There is no discussion of alternatives in this story. One might think that the only option for heart attack patients is to wait around until stem cell treatments become available. Even an additional line about alternatives would have been appreciated. The story makes it clear not only that the treatment is experimental but that it has to clear many more hurdles before becoming a clinical option. The story improves on a competing WebMD story by explaining the novelty of this study. “This is the first instance of therapeutic regeneration,” says Dr. Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. He says while nature abounds with examples of spontaneous regeneration of limbs or tissues – like a salamander’s new tail or a human liver regrowing to full size if partially damaged – doctors have not been able to help patients regrow heart tissue. This could change in the future if larger clinical trials and longer patient outcomes confirm the results of this early research published Monday in the journal The Lancet. Marbán and his colleagues first presented this research at an American Heart Association conference in November. The story goes beyond the Cedars-Sinai press release.

SOLUTION:
Patient’s own stem cells help heal heart, early research shows