instruction:
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:
"Like its competitors, the Times did not discuss costs–an omission which perhaps is more acceptable in this story since it clearly indicated that this is not very close to being a marketable product. Nevertheless, we would have liked to have seen some mention of the financial impact. Many patients with type 1 diabetes are not using currently available pumps and sensors because of the high cost of these devices. It seems likely that this new treatment, if it ever becomes widely available, will be as expensive or more so than the current pump and sensor technology. We applaud the Times for avoiding the term ""artificial pancreas"" in the headline and using it sparingly in the body of the story. The competing stories couldn’t resist it. We can understand why marketers and media relations people would favor this term because of its promotional value, but we don’t think it’s a good way to describe this technology in an objective piece of journalism. ""Artificial pancreas"" is misleading because we’re not really anywhere close to being able to replicate what the normal human pancreas does through artificial technology. Forgetting for a moment that the pancreas does much more than simply dispense insulin (it also produces a number of other hormones and digestive enzymes that aren’t impacted by diabetes), what’s more important is how the pancreas works in concert with the brain and other systems to regulate glucose in a very tight range. The normal human pancreas starts releasing insulin before we eat in response to complex environmental cues, whereas any artificial system would need to be told that meal is coming or react to the rise in glucose after the fact. Plus, insulin produced by the body starts acting right away, whereas insulin analogues take about 20 minutes to take effect. Put this all together and we see that the ""artificial pancreas"" will, for the foreseeable future, require human intervention to predict post-meal insulin needs and dosing or else patients will be at risk of post-meal blood sugar spikes. And it’s not at all clear that such a system will improve overall blood sugar management compared with existing methods. The term ""artificial pancreas"" conjures up a vision of totally automated glucose management and essentially a ""cure"" for type 1 diabetes. This is overselling what the technology can do. The Times waited until the last 3 paragraphs of an 1,100-word story to hint that an automated system could deliver unsafe doses of insulin. It isn’t until the last sentence that we learn that the system would need to be ""exquisitely reliable"" in order to be safe. We feel the story should have raised these issues earlier and that it could have done more to emphasize just how difficult it will be for any device to calculate insulin requirements on the fly. Insulin dosing is affected by factors ranging from how much a person has exercised to what and how much they have eaten. It’s conceivable that technology can account for all of these variables, but there are a lot ways things could go wrong, with potentially deadly results. It’s a close call, but we don’t feel the story did enough to call attention to these issues. In contrast to its competitors, which all led readers to believe there had been a fully automated system sensing glucose levels and dispensing insulin to the participants in this study, the Times noted that the insulin was dispensed by a nurse based on calculations made by a computer algorithm. The Times clearly indicated that the significance of this test was as a ""proof of concept"" that the algorithm works and is safe, not as a test of any specific device. It noted that a fully automated system combining glucose monitoring and insulin delivery was still ""hypothetical."" In addition, the Times story was the only one to draw attention to the small size of this study and the fact the findings were not statistically significant for the primary outcomes. This note of caution was completely lacking from the competing coverage. The story did not exaggerate the effects of type 1 diabetes. The story includes quotes from interviews with one of the study investigators and another researcher, and identifies both as having ties to diabetes products manufacturers. It also quotes an analyst at an investment firm. It would have been better had they included one more source who didn’t have commercial ties to specific products. The story describes currently available technology for glucose monitoring and insulin infusion. It describes the limitations of current approaches for managing insulin, especially during the overnight period. The story is a bit misleading in that it leaves the impression that all type 1 diabetics are currently using pumps at night. This is not actually the case. Most people are doing self monitoring of blood glucose and making judgement calls on whether and how much insulin to administer. However, the story does enough for a satisfactory in our view. The Times did a good job of describing the system used in this study and how close it is to being commercially available. It called the system ""experimental"" and said that it was ""not fully automated."" It said that a fully automated glucose monitor/insulin delivery system was still ""hypothetical"" and would face regulatory hurdles before it could be marketed to the public. The story describes the progression from skin prick glucose testing to continuous monitoring and insulin pumps. It places the new developments in this field on this continuum. There could have been more discussion of many of the recent advances that have made daytime hyper- and hypoglycemia less of a problem such as the newer short-acting insulins. The story did not rely on any news release."
answer:
Insulin Study Could Lead to New Dosage Devices


question:
Although this therapy is not yet available for patient use, the story makes a point of noting that the cost may well be “stratospheric,” should it make it to market. If approved, such treatments are expected to command stratospheric prices. For example, a separate Spark gene therapy for a rare type of childhood blindness, which is on track for Food and Drug Administration clearance soon, could cost $1 million per patient for infusions in both eyes, according to some Wall Street analysts. Still, the therapies can produce at least some offsetting savings. Porteus noted in his editorial that the hemophilia therapy resulted in savings of about $200,000 a year per patient because of the elimination of clotting-factor infusions. The story summarizes the outcome of the small, 10-person trial that dominates this narrative: Lindsey George, the lead investigator and a hematologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that nine of the 10 men in the trial didn’t experience any bleeding episodes after the gene therapy treatment. The one patient who needed clotting factor because of bleeding used 91 percent less than before, she said. Although the story does not address harms directly–and should have–it does note that one of the worrying side effects of gene therapy—spurring the body to attack itself—was not present in this study. It is clear from the story that the study is small and an “early-stage trial.” One source also notes that the researchers tracked individuals in the study for no more than a year and a half, making longer term assessments unavailable. The story could have done more, though, to signal to the reader that, despite the encouraging outcomes of the study, the treatment is still very much under development. The next stage—Phase 3 trials—requires more participants, more careful study design, and takes, on average, three years to complete. The treatment described here, if ultimately proved worthy, could have a profound impact on a serious genetic condition. Independent sources are identified in the story, as are the funders. But missing from the text is information describing linkages between the two funders—Spark Therapeutics and Pfizer—and the lead researchers. It’s not clear from the story that there is a financial relationship. Individuals coping with hemophilia B have few options, and the story describes the main one: injections of blood-clotting factor to stem runaway bleeding. Since the story notes that the research is at an early stage with only 10 participants, a reader can easily infer that the treatment is not yet available. However, additional information about remaining evaluation stages for this treatment would have been a useful reinforcing addition. Hemophilia B sufferers who see this story will likely be contacting their doctors. The story establishes novelty with this: The researchers presented earlier findings on the gene therapy a year ago at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting, but the latest data covers a larger patient group and a longer time period. A news release issued by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia did a good job of describing this study; the Post story could have picked up more of the salient details from that text but reveals independent reporting nevertheless by including sources not connected to the study.
answer:
Gene therapy makes a big advance treating hemophilia B blood disorder


question:
"When President Obama announced that Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta would replace Robert Gates as Defense secretary, Rep. Marcy Kaptur took the the pages of ""Politico"" to offer him advice. In suggesting that the Defense Department needs to cut back on its use of petroleum products, the Toledo Democrat said:  ""Even before the oil companies and Wall Street speculators drove up the price of gasoline close to $4 a gallon, the landed cost of a gallon delivered to the front lines for our troops in Afghanistan cost more than $400."" PolitiFact Ohio already thought gas prices in Ohio were outrageous, but the idea of spending $400 per gallon boggles the mind. So we decided to look into the claim by Kaptur, a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Pentagon. We started with Kaptur’s office. Her staff said she gleaned her information from testimony delivered to her subcommittee. A 2009 report in The Hill, a Washington publication, recounted some of that testimony. The Pentagon comptroller’s office gave appropriators that statistic to explain the high cost of keeping troops in Afghanistan. It factors in the transportation and security costs of transporting the fuel into areas with a lack of infrastructure, challenging geography and increased roadside bomb attacks. ""It turns out that when you factor in the cost of transportation to a coastal facility in Pakistan, or airlifting it to Kandahar - and then you add the cost of putting it in a truck, guarding it, delivering it to the battlefield, and then transferring that one gallon into a piece of equipment that needs it - in extreme cases that gallon of gasoline could cost up to $400,"" Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told a 2009 Naval Energy Forumin Virginia. One U.S. Army official has said the ""fully burdened"" cost of transporting fuel into remote areas can be as high as $1,000 per gallon. ""In some places you have to fly it in by plane or by helicopter and drop off bladders of fuel,"" Kevin T. Geiss, program director for energy and partnerships in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment told Army News Service. ""Those costs can be an additional $20, $40 or even $200 a gallon."" High fuel costs in military battlegrounds predate U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. A May 2001 Defense Science Board report cites the true cost of military fuel at ""$17.50 per gallon for USAF worldwide tanker-delivered fuel, and hundreds of dollars per gallon for Army forces deep into the battlespace."" Retired Army Brigadier General Steven M. Anderson, who handled military logistics operations for Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq during 2006 and 2007, offers a slightly different picture -- that the cost of bringing gasoline to troops in Afghanistan actually works out to be at least $30 per gallon, and is possibly as high in the mid-40s. He told a Capitol Hill Briefing on fuel convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq that it cost about $13.88 per gallon to transport a gallon of gas to troops in Iraq when he worked there in 2007, and the amount has risen since then to $17.44 cents per gallon. He explained that it’s more expensive to bring gas to Afghanistan because ""Iraq is a land of six lane highways from one end to the other"" while ""Afghanistan is perhaps the most isolated country in the entire world."" He said the $400 per gallon figure for gas that others have cited for Afghanistan applies only when fuel must be brought by aircraft to the most remote areas. ""If we’re flying water up there, it’s $400 per gallon, or toothpaste or whatever,"" Anderson said. ""Anything that flies is expensive."" Retired Air Force Lt. General Norman R. Seip, who spoke at the same event, described the $400 per gallon cost as a ""worst case scenario,"" that accounts for a tanker providing airborne refueling to a cargo plane. He said the lower figures are more reasonable. So where does that leave Kaptur’s statement? Numerous sources have said it can cost as much as $400 per gallon to provide gas for troops in Afghanistan. That the statistic seems to be a high end number is a piece of information that provides clarification."
answer:

A gallon (of gasoline) delivered to the front lines for our troops in Afghanistan cost more than $400.