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: "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."

SOLUTION: Insulin Study Could Lead to New Dosage Devices

PROBLEM: Five cases of H7N9 bird flu infections have been diagnosed in central Anhui province since Dec. 8, and two people have died, state media reported. In Shanghai, officials said this week that a man was diagnosed with H7N9 and is being treated in a city hospital. Another case has been reported in Xiamen in coastal Fujian province, where poultry sales have been halted. In rural Jinzhai county in Anhui province, local officials on Thursday announced a two-week closure of a meat market after a shopkeeper was diagnosed with H7N9. The provincial government also issued a warning on social media urging residents to avoid buying and slaughtering live chickens themselves. A major H7N9 bird flu outbreak in humans first struck China in March 2013, killing more than 40 people and devastating the poultry industry. The strain is less virulent than the H5N1 strain that the World Health Organization says has killed more than 370 people.

SOLUTION: Bird flu infects 7 people in China this month, killing 2.

PROBLEM: Rwanda briefly closed its border with Congo over the virus outbreak in the city of more than 2 million as the painstaking work of finding, tracking and vaccinating people who had contact with the man — and the contacts of those contacts — began. The man died on Wednesday after spending several days at home with his large family while showing symptoms. Congo’s presidency said the entire family was at “high risk” and in quarantine. The Ebola coordinator for North Kivu province, Dr. Aruna Abedi, confirmed the wife’s case to The Associated Press hours after that of the child. “We’re seeing the first active transmission chain in Goma and expect more to come,” the International Rescue Committee’s Ebola response director, Andre Heller, warned in a statement. This outbreak has killed more than 1,800 people, nearly a third of them children. It is now the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, and last month the World Health Organization declared it a rare global emergency. Rwanda’s state minister for foreign affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe, confirmed the border closure, a day after WHO officials praised African nations for keeping their borders open. Last week Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas to people from Congo, citing the Ebola outbreak, shortly before the annual hajj pilgrimage there this month. Congo’s presidency condemned Rwanda’s decision, and Congolese at the busy frontier expressed frustration. “I can’t understand why they don’t just test us instead of closing these borders,” said Angel Murhula, who works in Rwanda. Several hours later Congo’s presidency said the border had reopened. A Rwanda health ministry statement called the events a “traffic slowdown” as surveillance for Ebola was reinforced. The ministry advised against unnecessary travel to the Goma area. WHO has recommended against travel restrictions amid the outbreak but says the risk of regional spread is “very high.” Any border closure is likely to push people to avoid official crossings equipped with hand-washing stations and where people are checked for signs of fever or other Ebola symptoms. In June, three people who crossed on an unguarded footpath into Uganda died there before their family members were taken back to Congo for treatment. The death Wednesday in Goma “in such a dense population center underscores the very real risk of further disease transmission, perhaps beyond the country’s borders,” United Nations agencies said in a joint statement marking a year of the outbreak. The man in his 40s was a miner returning from an area of northeastern Ituri province, Mongwalu, where no Ebola cases in this outbreak have been recorded, WHO said. He was exposed to the virus along the roughly 300-mile-long (490-kilometer) route from the city of Komanda to Goma as he took motor taxis over a number of days through the densely populated region at the heart of the outbreak. The man arrived in Goma on July 13 and started showing symptoms on July 22. He was isolated at an Ebola treatment center on Tuesday. He had spent five days being treated at home before going to a health facility, where Ebola was suspected. Symptoms can start to occur between two and 21 days from infection, health experts say. “He may not even have been aware of the exposure that he had,” WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said Wednesday. Symptoms such as fever can be confused with malaria, which is endemic in the region. Congo’s new Ebola response coordinator, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, has said there appears to be no link between the case and a previous one in Goma announced two and a half weeks ago. That case was a 46-year-old preacher who managed to pass through three health checkpoints on the way from Butembo, one of the communities hardest hit by this outbreak. The declaration of a global health emergency — the fifth in history —came days after that first Goma case. It has brought a surge of millions of dollars in new pledges by international donors, but some health workers say a new approach is needed to combat misunderstandings in a part of Congo that had never experienced Ebola before. Health workers responding to the outbreak have been attacked, even killed, in a region where rebel groups are active and the population is wary of outsiders. There is no licensed treatment for Ebola, which is spread by close contact with bodily fluids of those infected, and survival can depend on seeking treatment as quickly as possible. And yet many people in the region don’t believe that the virus is real, health workers have said. This outbreak is second only to the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that left more than 11,300 people dead. ___ Ssuuna reported from Kigali, Rwanda. Associated Press writer Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro contributed. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

SOLUTION:
1-year-old daughter, wife of Congo’s Goma victim have Ebola.