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.
--------
Question: Business by its very nature is cut-throat; competitors rarely aid one another because one company’s success almost invariably comes at the expense of the other’s vitality. When such leg-ups occur, they are often inadvertent — the result of one firm’s having failed to take advantage of an opportunity that its competitor later cleaned up on. Such was the case when Mars, Inc. passed on the chance for its flagship product, M&Ms, to be the candy used in 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Its turn-down cleared the way for Hershey Foods Corporation to make a remarkable splash for its Reese’s Pieces. During production of E.T., Amblin Productions approached Mars, Inc. about a possible tie-in between M&Ms and the film. For whatever reason, Mars said “No” to the proposition. Many purported reasons for that negative response have been provided by a variety of sources: Mars decided it didn’t want its bite-size candy associated with an extraterrestrial living with an earth family, or it thought the film’s premise just a bit too otherworldly, or an unnamed M&M executive decided nobody would want to see a movie about an alien adopted by a lonely kid. (M&Ms did survive as the candy used in the 1982 William Kotzwinkle novelization of the film, however.) Lore adds its own details to flesh out stories, details that will cast the one who is perceived as having done something foolish in as absurd a light as possible. When that story is one of a poor business decision made by a large corporation, someone telling the tale is sure to state as rock-solid fact an explanation that is now clearly laughable. No one ever suggests that Mars might have already had its advertising budget locked for that year, or that it might have felt ill at ease at the prospect of dealing with a new advertising medium and the new people who went with it, or any other plausible and purely logical business reason for taking a pass on this offer. No, the “reason” offered in lore will always be something along the lines of “Mars didn’t think much of the planned movie and thus wanted to keep themselves separate from it,” a “reason” that casts the candymaker as unbelievably short-sighted given the breathtaking success of E.T. Whatever the reason for it, Mars’ “No” paved the way for Hershey’s “Yes.” The spurned offer was then tendered to Hershey, and — misgivings aside — that corporation went for it. Hershey did not pay to have Reese’s Pieces used in E.T., but it did agree to do a tie-in between the movie and the candy after the film was released. A deal was inked wherein Hershey Foods agreed to promote E.T. with $1 million of advertising; in return, Hershey could use E.T. in its own ads. Within two weeks of the movie’s premiere, Reese’s Pieces sales went through the roof. (Disagreement exists as to how far through the roof they went: Sales were variously described as having tripled, experienced an 85% jump, or increased by 65%). Whatever the numbers, though, Reese’s Pieces — up until then an underdog confection only faintly known by the U.S. candy-consuming public — were suddenly being consumed in great handfuls. And all thanks to a shy little alien lured from the bushes and into America’s hearts by a trail of peanut-butter-in-a-candy-coated-shell confections. Thus is the potential power of product placement. When it’s done right, it can make a product. Paid product placement in films has come to be one of the ordinary ways of things in Hollywood. Exxon paid $300,000 for its name to appear in Days of Thunder, Pampers paid $50,000 to be featured in Three Men and a Baby, and Cuervo Gold spent $150,000 for placement in Tequila Sunrise, according to Danny Thompson, president of Creative Entertainment Services, in a 1993 New York magazine interview. As for how effective the practice of product placement is, that same article quotes Joel Henrie, a partner at Motion Picture Placement, as saying: “Look what happened to Hermes scarves after Basic Instinct, Ray-Ban sunglasses after Risky Business, and suspenders after Michael Douglas wore them in Wall Street.” Not all product placement deals are “straight-fee” arrangements. There are actually three types of deals, the other two being the provision of costly merchandise (such as automobiles or appliances) for free just for the exposure (which accounts for about half of all placements), and the back-end promotion under which big corporations with huge promotional budgets aim for young audiences through tie-ins with popular films. In most films, product placement, while noticeable, is kept low-key. However, some Hollywood offerings have gone down in the annals of motion picture history as notorious examples of rampant commercialism. The 1988 snoozer Mac and Me could fairly be described as a ninety-minute advert for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, with an alien thrown in whenever things were running slow. Likewise, the 1987 film Leonard Part 6 was deemed by many to be a never-ending Coca-Cola commercial. But rampant product placement is not merely limited to forgettable films which did poorly at the box office, as 1999’s Runaway Bride proved. (In that film, everyone walks around with a copy of USA Today in his hands.) Product placement in movies is now a corporate fact of life, as are “bonehead” accounts of great marketing opportunities left to the other guy. One company’s gaffe becomes the cautionary tale passed along to those in all manner of industries because the message is universal: This could be us one day if we don’t maintain vigilance. Once again, folklore is called upon to teach by example what might not have effectively been learned from a book. In an odd way, true-life corporate instances of one man’s garbage turning out to be another man’s treasure are almost a rip on the standard Hollywood legend of (pick your favorite movie star) was offered the lead in (now unforgettable, hugely-popular film) but turned it down. Though that scenario has indeed played out a number of times in Tinseltown, it hasn’t happened nearly as often as is reported. In many cases, remembered tidbits of so-and-so’s having been mentioned merely in passing at a studio round-table of “Who could we get?” are mentally embroidered into memories of the role’s having been offered to the star, who waved it away. Or a bit of rumor is later remembered as fact, such as the case of Ronald Reagan, whose name was only kited as part of a press release designed to drum up interest in Casablanca  but is now widely believed to have been the studio’s first choice to play Rick Blaine — a role never intended for anyone but Humphrey Bogart.

Answer: M&Ms passed up the chance to be the candy used to lure the shy little alien from his hiding place in the 1982 blockbuster E.T., thereby letting one of the most successful instances of movie product placement fall into the hands of a competitor who benefited mightily from it.


Question: The shutdown began in late March in the Pacific nation of about 5 million, and a state of national emergency was declared to stifle local transmissions of the respiratory disease. “No one goes home, everyone goes into a managed facility,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, adding that 14 days spent in a government-approved facility would be a prerequisite for all foreign travellers. “Even one person slipping through the cracks and bringing the virus in can see an explosion in cases, as we have observed with some of our bigger clusters,” she told a media briefing in Wellington on Thursday. Ardern added that her cabinet would decide whether to extend the nationwide curbs on April 20, two days before the lockdown is set to end. The lockdown has reduced domestic transmissions, authorities said, with a steady fall this week in the daily rise in infections. The tally of infections rose by 29 to stand at 1,239 on Thursday, for the lowest daily rise since March 21, a sign the epidemic could be on the retreat since the lockdown began 15 days ago. Overnight, 35 people were declared to have recovered. New Zealand, like neighbouring Australia, has fewer infections than many countries and the pace of infections in both nations has slowed dramatically in the past week. Despite some signs of a plateau in infections, the government said it had no plans to relax the curbs over the Easter weekend and warned of hefty fines for non-essential travel then. Police will step up activity around holiday spots during the Easter holidays, authorities said, with some roadblocks planned. Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

Answer: New Zealand orders quarantine for returning citizens in coronavirus battle.


Question: We’ll rate this “Not Applicable” given the very early nature of the study and the fact that guadecitabine is clearly still far from approval for treating colorectal cancer so it would be difficult to put a precise dollar figure on it. It’s worth noting, however, that guadecitabine is also being considered for use in treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML) — and is much further along in development for that clinical application. In fact, there is already discussion about whether the potential benefits associated with using guadecitabine to treat AML outweigh the fact that other drugs are available in generic form (and are therefore less expensive). In short, while we don’t expect a release to place a dollar amount on the use of guadecitabine, we always like to see the issue of cost addressed in some way. The release does a good job here in two ways. First, the release makes clear that the goal of this study was not to assess benefits, but to assess potential harms. That places the findings — and the study design — in context. Second, the release notes that 15 of the 22 patients had at least one imaging scan to track the extent and location of their cancers. Twelve of those 15 patients had “stable” disease, while one saw a 30 percent decrease in the size of the tumors. The headline is problematic, but we’ll talk about that under the “Unjustifiable Language” criterion. The rest of the release does a good job of describing potential harms. The release discusses eight potential harms, defines them and offers numbers on all of them (e.g., “two patients developed thrombocytopenia, a lowered count of blood-clotting platelets”). That’s very good. Two things would have made it even better. First, the release could have included an explanation of what the observed adverse effects actually mean. For example, how severe was the thrombocytopenia? And how much of a risk does that pose to a patient’s health — are we talking about the potential for bruising easily? Or a high risk of bleeding to death? Second, it wasn’t clear if the dose of guadecitabine was related to observed effects. I.e., were patients who received higher doses of guadecitabine more likely to exhibit adverse effects? The release does a nice job here. The release sets the tone in its first sentence, which begins with: “In a small, phase I clinical trial…”. The release clearly explains the goals of the clinical trial, the number and type of patients involved, and the study design. The only thing that could have made things more clear would be if the release had told readers the size of the doses each of the four study groups received — and whether dose size was related to observed effects. No disease mongering here. The release clearly states that the study was supported by Astex Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures guadecitabine. There are a lot of drugs, and drug combinations, that are approved for use in colorectal cancer chemotherapy. Given that the release explicitly states that the study was not done to assess the potential benefits of guadecitabine, we don’t expect it to compare the drug’s performance to those other drugs. The release makes clear that this was a preliminary trial and that a phase II trial is ongoing. That’s good. In addition, the release states: “Guadecitabine is an experimental drug that has not been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” That’s great. We wish all releases were this straight-forward about drug/treatment availability. As noted above, there are a lot of drugs and combinations approved for use in colorectal cancer chemotherapy. The release does a good job of explaining how guadecitabine may act against colorectal cancer. There are currently two FDA approved drugs that are classified as DNA methyltransferase inhibitors; decitabine (Dacogen) and azacitidine (Vidaza). Both had been used in clinical trials in the treatment of colon cancer. The bulk of the release is very good in this regard, but the first thing readers see is the headline. That doesn’t mean the headline is more important, but it does mean that the headline is subject to additional scrutiny. And the headline here reaches too far. Here’s the headline: “Experimental drug guadecitabine found safe in patients with colorectal cancer.” Here’s an excerpt from lower down in the release: “16 patients experienced neutropenia, a low count of the infection-fighting white blood cells called neutrophils; five patients with neutropenia had fevers; three patients became anemic; and two patients developed thrombocytopenia, a lowered count of blood-clotting platelets. Other side effects included diarrhea (three patients), fatigue (two patients) and dehydration (two patients). There was one death during the study, possibly resulting from febrile neutropenia caused by the treatment.” The word “safe” is relative when discussing chemotherapy treatment, but when most readers see something described as “safe” they assume that means it won’t harm them. For that reason, it’s a stretch to apply the word “safe” to any treatment in which a sample size of 22 patients is associated with this many adverse outcomes, and may have contributed to a death.

Answer:
Experimental drug guadecitabine found safe in patients with colorectal cancer