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: The story does not talk about costs, which was disappointing. The costs of intensive medical therapy can easily be identified. Using an online pharmacy we calculated the costs to be about $1,500 to $2,000 annually for medical therapy, using generic drugs. Using the Health Care Blue Book, we found the average cost of coronary artery bypass sugery and hospitalization to be about $62,000. We think that this is important information for readers that should have been included. The quantification here was presented in such a way to make it clear to readers that there was no significant benefit found to surgical intervention, which is a fair conclusion to draw from the study. The story says, “In the Stich study, 41% of patients assigned to treatment with drugs alone died during the follow-up period, which averaged five years. That compared with a mortality rate of 36% among patients who received bypass surgery plus medication. Although the relative reduction in risk of death was 14%, the result didn’t meet tests for statistical significance, meaning it could have resulted from chance alone.” That’s a great way to describe the lack of statistical significance. It would have been even more powerful to show readers the actual number of patients who died in each group. The story provides great information about the study itself and about the overall state of the evidence supporting heart surgery. “How best to treat these patients has been fraught with uncertainty,” is one of the more notable phrases from the story. It also says, “Many patients aren’t evaluated for heart surgery to treat diseased arteries because they don’t suffer classic chest pain or because doctors worry that hearts weakened by heart failure won’t benefit from the procedure. Other doctors recommend immediate bypass surgery despite a lack of vigorous studies to support that strategy.” The story does not engage in disease-mongering and takes a very careful approach to describing the types of patients who would be affected by this study’s results. We also like the way they provided snapshots of patients who were in both arms of the study — surgery and non-surgery — at the end of the story, making it clear, as the study did, that both routes can be equally successful. The story brings in some strong independent voices who help make sense of this complicated study: James Fang, a cardiologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, Raymond Gibbons, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, and Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Rarely do you see a story that spends as much time with independent experts as it does with the authors of the study. The story does a great job showing how the standard interventions for heart disease stacked up against each other in this study. We wish that some mention had been made of diet and exercise and that at least a sentence had been included about whether there might be differences in outcomes seen as a result of different medication patterns. The story doesn’t make it clear what exactly the patients were taking. The story makes it clear that the range of treatments studied by the authors are widely available. The story makes it clear that there is a great need for more evidence in this field and that this study will be surprising to many clinicians because of a long-held assumption that surgery is the superior option. tudies published in the early 1990s supported the view that bypass surgery provided a better long term outcome. The story does not rely on a news release. Claim: More Options Before Bypass Surgery, Study Finds

SOLUTION: The piece gave readers some powerful information to help them sort through the range of factors that should be considered for any medical intervention. The only weakness our reviewers found with the story is the lack of comment about cost. Too often stories present medical options as false choices of best versus worst. They don’t take into consideration the very real differences between patients’ medical histories, diagnoses and expectations. This story should be applauded for giving readers a clear understanding of the complexities of shared decision-making between providers and patients. As noted by one of the experts quoted in the story, “You don’t have a good therapy and a bad therapy, you have a choice.” This is a message that the story gets across very well and is an important one for readers.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Saturday marks the Drug Enforcement Administration’s nationwide “Drug Take Back Day.” Only pills or patches can be accepted, not liquids or needles. A list of collection sites is available on the DEA’s website. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s website also provides a list of medication collection sites around the state. People turned in nearly 469 tons of prescription drugs nationwide last year. The Illinois Department of Human Services says turning in unused or expired prescription drugs can prevent abuse or theft of the drugs. Claim: Collection sites available for expired, leftover medications.

SOLUTION: Illinois and federal officials are encouraging people to bring expired and unused prescription drugs to collection sites.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: "The pre-Christmas slaughter of 20 elementary school children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school has renewed public debate over how to prevent future mass killings with guns. On Jan. 14, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, now chaired by Warrensville Heights Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge, weighed in on that question by delivering a series of speeches on the House of Representatives floor that decried a U.S. ""culture of violence."" Newly elected Columbus Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty used the opportunity to deliver her first oration on the House of Representatives floor. In it, she lamented that ""mass killings have gone from being an extremely rare occurrence to a common occurrence,"" and suggested the U.S re-examine its funding for mental health services, place adequate controls on ammunition and  ""ensure proper and tighter access to firearms."" ""According to Harvard Health Policy Review, each year approximately 30,000 people in the United States die as a result of gunfire, and about 80,000 people are wounded,"" the former Ohio state legislator noted, applauding President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for ""proactively taking the necessary steps to address this critical issue."" We wondered whether Beatty’s statistics were accurate, so we decided to track them down. We soon found an article in the Fall 2001 issue of Harvard Health Policy Review, titled The Costs and Benefits of Reducing Gun Violence, that begins with the exact wording used by Beatty - ""Each year, approximately 30,000 people in the United States die as a result of gunfire and about 80,000 are wounded."" But the date of that article gave us pause. The numbers it cited were more than a decade old. We wanted to find more recent numbers. We turned to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics to verify the information. The latest available version of its data says there were 31,672 firearms deaths in the United States during 2010, a ratio of 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people. That number  is a bit higher than the number Harvard Health Policy Review cited in 2001, although it is certainly in the ballpark. The second set of CDC data we examined tracks non-fatal gun injuries. By the CDC’s reckoning, there were 73,883 non-fatal firearm injuries in 2011, a rate of 23.7 injuries per 100,000 people. That number is a bit lower than the number Beatty cited from the Harvard Health Policy Review, although it isn’t too far off. If the number of non fatal injuries from BB or pellet guns were added into the mix, the number of injuries from 2011 would exceed Harvard’s estimate of 80,000 yearly wounds from gunfire. According to CDC, 16,451 people in the United States were hurt by pellet guns - about 5.3 incidents per 100,000 people. Beatty accurately represented the statistics printed in Harvard Health Policy Review, even though its tally was more than a decade old. More recent data indicates those numbers haven’t changed much over the years." Claim: Joyce Beatty Says each year approximately 30,000 people in the United States die as a result of gunfire, and about 80,000 people are wounded.

SOLUTION:
Rep. Joyce Beatty says about 30,000 people die from gunfire each year in the U.S.