instruction:
Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
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Paragraph: In 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford signed off on the National Emergencies Act (NEA), federal legislation that ended all previous national states of emergency and formalized the process by which the President can declare states of emergencies and undertake special powers during those emergencies. In general, the President may initiate a state of emergency by issuing a declaration (typically via executive order). An existing state of emergency can be terminated by the President himself, or by a joint resolution by Congress. The President can veto such a resolution, however, requiring both houses of Congress to then override the veto by a two-thirds vote. When President Donald Trump hinted in early 2019 his intention to bypass Congress and secure funding for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border by declaring a national emergency — and then followed through on that plan — the subject of “national emergencies” suddenly became a hot topic of public discussion. Since the public tends to associate that term with dire threats such as terrorist attacks, epidemics, or the outbreak of war, many people were surprised to learn that several dozen national emergencies had been declared since the passage of the NEA in 1976 — as reflected in a viral social media post:  According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at the time of President Trump’s declaration of a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States in February 2019, some 58 national emergencies had previously been declared by various presidents since 1979, with 31 of them still in effect as of February 2019. The gist of the social media post displayed above is therefore correct, in that every U.S. president since 1976 (excluding Gerald Ford, whose term ended in January 1977) has declared at least one national emergency, although we came up with some slightly different numbers. (Our tally based on the Brennan Center’s list has Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush each declaring one more emergency than stated above, and President Barack Obama declaring one fewer than stated.) In addition, the majority of those emergency declarations remain in effect as of this writing. The focus of these national emergencies has ranged from President Carter’s blocking Iranian government property after fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in Tehran in 1979 and President Reagan’s barring trade with Nicaragua in 1985, to President Clinton’s prohibiting transactions with terrorists who threatened to disrupt the Middle East peace process in 1995 and President Obama’s declaring an emergency over the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009. Claim: Every U.S. president since 1976 has declared at least one national emergency.
answer:
In short, although many Americans may not have been aware of it at the beginning of 2019, the United States has been under one or more states of national emergency continuously for the last four decades.


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Paragraph: The release does not mention cost. The FDA evaluates drugs without consideration of cost, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t comment on it — and that’s why we’re rating this Not Applicable. But let’s be real here: The value of a new drug is a function not just of how well it works, but its cost-effectiveness. So we look forward to the day when any news release about a new drug — even one from the FDA — will include some mention of cost in its message. This release gives the preliminary results from a single study of 310 patients. Because the drug is experimental, long-term results haven’t been studied. Of the 310 patients enrolled in the lone trial upon which the approval is based, 14.8 percent showed some shrinkage of tumors during the assessment period lasting from 2.1 to about 13.8 months. For a subset of patients who were classified as having a positive response to PD-L1 expression, the response was 26 percent. As noted above, tumor shrinkage doesn’t always lead to improvements in survival or quality of life. It is a surrogate endpoint — a substitute — for the main outcome which is survival. Although this drug looks promising, to be fully transparent about its benefits as currently known, the release should have explained this. As noted in the “Summary,” another larger study is underway to assess the drug’s impact on extending life and improving quality of life. The release includes a description of side effects of this treatment. The most common ones included fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea, urinary tract infection, fever (pyrexia) and constipation. The release also mentions that patients taking the drug have an increased risk of infection and serious side effects that are “immune-mediated.” We would have liked a bit more context on what this term means for patients. The release outlines that this is the very first clinical trial of this compound for safety and efficacy, and under which regulatory paths the drug was assessed, including “breakthrough therapy designation, priority review status and accelerated approval.” We’re giving this release the benefit of the doubt and rating it Satisfactory for its bare bones description of the trial (and since we already addressed the lack of long-term survival data in the “Benefits” section.) As it stands, the results from the small trial were preliminary and short-term and did not reflect long-term survival. We would have liked to see a reference or link to the completed trial where one could look at the results to assess independently or learn more about the outcomes. We think the release should have provided more data on the patient demographics, the treatment regimen (dosing amount and schedule) as well as the range in tumor reduction. There is no disease mongering. This release describes the approval of a new drug by a regulatory agency, but we’d still like to know who sponsored the study that’s the basis for the approval. It’s not enough to state who markets the drug. The release does not give us very much information about alternatives. These patients had already received other therapy and their cancer had recurred, so it is implied that they had no other alternatives. But this isn’t stated very clearly. We can assume (and it seems evident) that the platinum-based therapy that the patients didn’t respond to initially is the usual treatment. The FDA’s approval of a drug clears the way for the drug sponsor to scale up production and begin marketing and selling the product. (The FDA doesn’t state this explicitly but it can be inferred.) A NYT article said the drug would be available in about two months. The release clearly states this product is first of its kind for this type of cancer. We found no unjustifiable language. Claim: FDA approves new, targeted treatment for bladder cancer
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The Food and Drug Administration approved a new immunotherapy drug that acts as a “checkpoint” inhibitor in patients whose bladder cancer (urothelial carcinoma) has not responded to other chemotherapy. The drug, atezolizumab (marketed as Tecentriq), showed effectiveness in about 14 percent of 310 patients in a very preliminary study. The release notes that the trial measured tumor shrinkage as the main outcome. It didn’t note, as a NYT article did, and important for this type of trial, that it is unknown whether the treatment makes a difference in survival. A larger study is being done to examine this. Whether it makes a difference in quality of life is also important and will presumably be examined in the larger trial. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates 76,960 new cases of bladder cancer and 16,390 deaths from this disease in 2016. This approval of a new drug for treating bladder cancer is part of a wider area of research into immunotherapy, in which drugs target mechanisms of the human immune response. Patients with the PD-L1 protein highly expressed in their tumors appear to be responding best to the drug. This drug is an example of targeted chemotherapy which is becoming more important as treatments can be fine-tuned to the cancers of individual patients. In patients with intractable cancers, immunotherapy appears to offer some new hope while also bringing sobering questions about affordability and disparity of access by income. The drugs are typically very expensive — with some estimates putting the treatment cost for a single patient as high as $1 million. When the FDA gives a compound a “breakthrough” designation, some physicians and patients can misunderstand what that means. That’s a topic recently explored in this post.


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Paragraph: The United Nations health agency called for tighter controls on such marketing, saying tougher regulations were crucial to winning the fight against childhood obesity. “Children are surrounded by adverts urging them to consume high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods, even when they are in places where they should be protected, such as schools and sports facilities,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO’s regional unit for Europe. The promotion of foods high in saturated and trans-fats, sugars and salt has for years been recognized as a significant risk factor for obesity in children and for diet-related chronic diseases such as heart disease and some cancers later in life. In a report on food marketing, WHO Europe said the food industry increasingly uses cheap new marketing channels such as social media and smart phone apps to target children. Television remains the dominant form of advertising and a large majority of children and adolescents watch TV on average for more than two hours a day, it said. “Overweight is one of the biggest public health challenges of the 21st century: all countries are affected to varying extents, particularly in the lower socioeconomic groups,” Jakab said in a foreword to the report. And the picture is not improving, she added. Data from the WHO’s Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative show that, on average, one child in every three aged 6 to 9 years is overweight or obese. Jakab also said recent data suggest children become obese not just because they watch TV instead of being active but also because of exposure to advertising and other marketing tactics. Leading categories of advertised foods are soft drinks, sweetened breakfast cereals, biscuits, sweets, snacks, ready meals and fast food outlets, the WHO report said. “Unfortunately, marketing unhealthy food to children has been proven to be disastrously effective,” the report said. “Whereas adults are aware when they are being targeted ... children are unable to distinguish, for example, between adverts and cartoons. This makes them particularly receptive and vulnerable to messages that lead to unhealthy choices.”  WHO Europe said that, while all 53 member states of its European region have signed up to restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, most rely on general advertising regulations that do not specifically address the promotion of high-fat, -salt or -sugar products. More comprehensive approaches - via either legislation, self-regulation or co-regulation - have only been adopted in Denmark, France, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, it said. Claim: WHO urges tougher food marketing rules to curb childhood obesity.
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The marketing of unhealthy foods to children has proven “disastrously effective”, driving obesity by using cheap social media channels to promote fat-, salt- and sugar-laden foods, the World Health Organisation’s Europe office said on Tuesday.