TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: Dr. Chris Baumert, a family physician at RiverStone Health, told the Billings Gazette there’s been a steep increase in the number of cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has labeled the threat of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea one of the nation’s most urgent public health threats. The rate of gonorrhea cases in the United States has increased 75.2 percent since the historic low in 2009. Montana officials are projecting more than 1,000 cases of gonorrhea in the state this year, compared to 867 in 2017. ___ Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com Claim: STD cases increase in Montana.

SOLUTION: Health officials say cases of sexually transmitted diseases have increased in Montana.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The story notes the price “per squat” at various spas and the cost of a do-it-yourself Internet kit. We think the story’s discussion of possible benefits is far too extensive considering the total lack of evidence to support them. We understand the need to identify some of the claims made by boosters of the therapy, but the story devotes some three paragraphs to seemingly every possible ailment the baths (or the herbs used in them) are purported to treat. It also throws in an anecdote from a woman suggesting the baths helped her to conceive at the age of 45. The caveats about chai-yok stand a good chance of getting lost in this avalanche of discussion about benefits. Aside from burns — the potential for which would seem to be obvious — we’re not sure if there are any harms associated with herbal steam baths for the vagina. The procedure seems less invasive than a douche, which is associated with potential health risks. We’ll call this not applicable. The story states that there are no studies that document the effectiveness of chai-yok for any of the conditions it is claimed to treat. It notes that while there is some biological rationale for why heat in the perineal area might be beneficial, it is impossible to say whether these steam baths do any good. The concept behind chai-yok seems vaguely reminiscent of douching, a treatment that has long been promoted as necessary for vaginal health despite a lack of supporting evidence and indications of possible harm. But while the idea may tap into some of the same psychology that makes the normal vagina seem not quite clean or healthy enough, we don’t see any evidence of overt disease-mongering in this particular story. The story quotes two doctors with expertise in gynecology and fertility. It also solicits comments from a practitioner of traditional oriental medicine. We don’t think the story had to mention alternative treatments for all the myriad problems that chai yok can supposedly help with. But since the story suggests in several places that chai yok increases fertility, we think a brief mention of other approaches that are supported by medical evidence would have been appropriate in this case. The story didn’t provide this information. The story identifies several spas in Los Angeles and New York where vaginal steam baths are offered. It notes that the treatments “are not easy to find” across the country. The story acknowledges the roots of chai-yok in Korean medicine.The approach is described as extremely avant garde in the U.S. — a characterization which is probably accurate. Given the variety of sources quoted, we can be sure the story wasn’t based on a press release. Claim: Vaginal steam bath finds a place among Southern California spa options

SOLUTION: We liked that this story points out early on that there is zero evidence to support the health benefits of herbal steam baths for the vagina, which are known in traditional Korean medicine as chai-yok. But we became confused when the story explained that the treatment is almost totally unheard of in the U.S., even among gynecologists and fertility experts. If there’s no evidence that chai-yok works and almost nobody knows about it or has tried it, what exactly makes this treatment worthy of an 850-word article in a leading national newspaper? There are limited journalistic resources to cover the seemingly limitless number of treatments that are out there. So we’d prefer to see journalists pursuing stories that aid the decision-making of a significant number of health care consumers. A story about herbal steam baths for the vagina seems unlikely to meet this objective.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "We may be months — at least — away from a vaccine to protect against COVID-19, but in the meantime the public is turning its eyes to drugs that could be used to treat it. Among the first to be lauded as a possible solution was the antiviral drug remdesivir, which attacks the coronavirus to prevent it from making copies of itself and spreading. A clinical trial run in April found that patients who took the drug were more likely to recover from the disease — and do so faster — than patients who took a placebo pill. But as excitement about remdesivir amps up, criticism has followed over the price that Gilead Sciences, the drug’s manufacturer, wants to charge for it. U.S. insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, will pay $3,120 for a five-day course of the drug, while other developed countries will pay about a third less because they’ll purchase from generic manufacturers to which Gilead has licensed production. The move has angered many, including the progressive advocacy group and think tank Public Citizen, which tweeted on June 29, 2020 about the price declaration, writing, ""Taxpayers spent $70,000,000 to develop this drug. It should be in the public domain. Instead, Big Pharma is robbing us blind."" Parts of the tweet, course, are opinions. But the $70 million claim is stated as a fact. How much did taxpayers spend to develop remdesivir? Let’s dig in. To back up the organization’s claim, Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicine director, sent a May 7, 2020 post published on their site titled, ""The real story of remdesivir."" Amid the worldwide Ebola outbreak in 2015, the U.S. government partnered with Gilead to identify a drug that targeted the Ebola virus and was successful in blocking the infection in Rhesus monkeys. That drug would later come to be known as remdesivir. In 2017, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report noted that an entity within the Department of Defense would cost-share with Gilead for ""continued development of this product,"" noting its antiviral activity against a number of viruses, including coronaviruses. The Department of Defense has spent $34.5 million so far on this effort. Also in 2017, the National Institutes of Health issued a $6 million grant to researchers at the University of North Carolina to speed the development of remdesivir. And as the novel coronavirus made its way into the world, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of NIH, announced it would funnel $30 million into the aforementioned clinical trial for remdesivir. Since the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health are funded through federal taxes, these three payments add up to what Public Citizen claimed. Public Citizen wrote that taxpayers paid $70 million to develop remdesivir. Three separate projects from agencies that are funded by taxpayer dollars, adding up to $70 million, have commenced since 2015. Claim: “Taxpayers spent $70,000,000 to develop this drug ( remdesivir).

SOLUTION:
When the drug that would come to be known as remdesivir was identified as a possible treatment for the Ebola virus, the Department of Defense paid Gilead to develop it, to the tune of $34.5 million today    A $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health was awarded to researchers at the University of North Carolina to speed the development of remdesivir    NIH also sunk $30 million into the clinical trial to observe how remdesivir acted against COVID-19 earlier this spring     Both the Department of Defense and NIH are federal agencies whose budgets stem from tax dollars