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: They found several creams caused skin cancer in the specially bred mice, which had been pre-treated with ultraviolet radiation. The cancers are not melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, they stressed in their report in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, but another type called squamous cell carcinoma. Such tumours are slow growing, highly treatable and only fatal if patients fail to have them removed. Allan Conney and colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey said they discovered the risk while testing a theory that caffeine could prevent skin cancer. “We sort of got into this by accident,” Conney said in a telephone interview. “We wanted a safe cream that we could put the caffeine into.”   They were testing specially bred albino mice, which are prone to develop skin cancer. The mice are pre-treated with ultraviolet radiation to simulate the effects of a human who has had heavy sun exposure in the past but then stopped — something that may be happening in the population as people realize the risks of getting a tan. Conney’s team decided to test the creams first and found that all four they tested caused tumours to grow on the mice. He said he does not know why, but suspects two ingredients — mineral oil and sodium laurel sulphate. “We’d like to understand the mechanism. What is most important is to see whether these moisturizing creams are tumorigenic in people,” Conney said. He said his lab is not equipped to do this but someone should. But he added, “I don’t think that people should be scared because this is a mouse study and we don’t know whether or not it applies to humans.”   Other experts were sceptical about the study. “This is a pretty artificial situation with the mouse skin primed by a lot of UV light to develop cancer,” Karol Sikora, Medical Director of Cancer Partners U.K. in Britain, said in a statement. Dr. Jonathan Rees, an expert in dermatology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said squamous cell carcinoma was not a big health worry. “Non-melanoma skin cancer in man is very, very common and is almost 100 percent curable with an operation usually simpler than a tooth filling,” Rees said in a statement. Conney said the mouse was a commonly used model in skin cancer but said he agreed that it does not perfectly replicate human skin and human behaviour. He said his team approached Johnson & Johnson to create a cream without the suspect products and they developed one using other readily available ingredients. “They are things that are commonly used in many moisturizing creams,” he said. This cream did not cause the tumours in the mice, they said. He said Rutgers and Johnson & Johnson had patented the new cream jointly but did not know whether it would be commercially developed. A spokesman at the company was not immediately available for comment.

SOLUTION: Skin creams seen to cause tumours on mice.

PROBLEM: Officials went ahead with the parade despite the discouragement of the city health department about the ever-spreading virus. Within 72 hours of the parade, all the hospital beds in Philadelphia were full of flu patients. Within six weeks, more than 12,000 people died — a death every five minutes — and 20,000 had died within six months. Despite the human toll, there has been no memorial or public remembrance of flu victims in the city. Until now. The Mutter Museum, known for its collection of organs preserved in jars, deformed skeletons and wax casts of medical maladies, is launching new permanent exhibit on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in Philadelphia. “Spit Spreads Death” will open on Oct. 17, and will feature interactives mapping the pandemic, artifacts, images and personal stories. “It’s still referred to by some historians as the forgotten pandemic, because how many Americans are conscious of it today?” said Robert Hicks, the museum’s director. The exhibit takes its name from health department signs that popped up around the city as the pandemic spread. Ahead of the exhibit’s launch, the museum will present a parade Saturday along the same stretch of road where the ill-fated Liberty Loan Parade took place. A sort of moving memorial, the parade will feature about 500 members of the public honoring victims of the pandemic, four illuminated floats and an original piece of music performed by Grammy-winning choir “The Crossing.” “The parade has turned into an interesting commemorative act,” said Matt Adams, co-founder of Blast Theory, the artists’ group creating the parade. Anyone can sign up to participate and can choose the name of an actual flu victim to honor while marching. Marchers will be given a sign with the name of the person they chose and will move along the parade route flanked by the illuminated sculptures. Members of city’s public health community have been urged to join in. “This is all about the process of remembering what the risks are in public health, because that is a crucial way for us to stay safe today,” he said. More U.S. soldiers died from the flu than from battles in Europe during the war. It was called the Spanish flu at the time because Spain was neutral during the conflict and had no restrictions on the press, and could therefore report the outbreak freely, said Nancy Hill, special projects manager at the museum. The general public in much of the U.S. was uninformed about the virus because of the crackdown on news and any speech deemed unpatriotic. Speaking of soldiers dying from the flu fell into that category. About 500 million people, or one-third of the world’s population, became infected with the virus. An estimated 20-50 million died around the world, with about 675,000 flu-related deaths in the United States. Troops moving around the globe in crowded ships and trains helped the deadly virus spread as the war dragged on. The exhibit itself will include interactives that allow people to explore their own neighborhoods to see how the flu hit their street, and even their own homes. Among the most poignant artifacts is a selection of Christmas gifts that a woman named Naomi Whitehead Ellis Ford purchased for friends and family, all fitted with handwritten personal notes to the intended recipients. But they were never handed out, because she passed away from the flu on Oct. 21. Hicks hopes visitors take away a sense of the scope of the pandemic and see how the city came together to help each other, and to be vigilant — getting vaccines, taking common-sense health care measures and staying informed. The museum even threw a health fair in a south Philadelphia neighborhood, offering everything from flu shots to Narcan training. “It is too easy in the United States to forget,” Hicks said. “Cholera, typhus, typhoid fever all mean nothing to most Americans today, but President Lincoln’s son was killed by typhoid fever. From the high and mighty to those whose names aren’t remembered, these diseases were commonplace. The fact that measles is back again is a great reminder: These diseases don’t go away.”

SOLUTION: From parade to pandemic: Museum looks at 1918′s deadly flu.

PROBLEM: People wearing traditional Bavarian clothes toast with beer during the opening day of the 177th Oktoberfest in Munich September 18, 2010. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger German researchers analyzed data from France, Italy, Spain, Britain, The Netherlands, Greece, Germany and Denmark and found 50,400 out of a total of 79,100 cases of certain types of cancers — in including bowel and throat tumors — in 2008 were caused by people drinking more than recommended limits. “Many cancer cases could have been avoided if alcohol consumption was limited to two alcoholic drinks per day in men and one alcoholic drink per day in women, ... the recommendations of many health organizations,” said Madlen Schutze of the German Institute of Human Nutrition, who led the study. “And even more cancer cases would be prevented if people reduced their alcohol intake to below recommended guidelines or stopped drinking alcohol at all.”   A standard drink contains about 12 grams of alcohol and is equivalent to one 125 milliliter (ml) glass of wine or a half pint of beer. “Many people just don’t know that drinking alcohol can increase their cancer risk,” said Sara Hiom, director of health information at the charity Cancer Research UK. She noted that in Britain, mouth cancer has become much more common in the last 10 years, and “one reason for this could be because of higher levels of drinking, as this study reflects.”   According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization, there is a causal link between alcohol consumption and liver cancer, breast cancer colon or bowel cancer, and cancers of the upper digestive tract such as mouth, throat and oesophageal cancers. The researchers, whose work was published in the British Medical Journal, used data from research known as the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) study in which 363,988 men and women, mostly aged between 35 and 70 when they joined the study, were followed for cancer from the mid-1990s. They calculated that in 2008, alcohol consumption by men was responsible for about 57,600 cases of cancer of the types known to be linked to drinking. More than half of the cases, or 33,000, were due to having more than two drinks a day. Alcohol intake by women in the eight countries caused about 21,500 cases of upper digestive tract, liver, colorectum, and breast cancer, of which more than 80 percent, or 17,400, were due to their having more than one standard drink a day. Manuela Bergmann, who worked with Schutze on the study, said the findings provided solid support for recommended drinking limits and said she hoped more people would stick to them. “It underlines that at the very least, it would be good to stay within the limits,” she said in a telephone interview. “Many people believe it’s only a small group who drink more than the upper limits, but it’s becoming more of a problem because alcohol is cheap and available, so people drink more.”   Estimates from the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund published in February said a third of all common cancers in the United States, China and Britain could be prevented each year if people had healthier diets, drank less alcohol and exercised more.

SOLUTION:
Study shows Europe's alcohol-linked cancer burden.