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.
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Question: Republicans on the GOP-majority Senate Environment and Public Works Committee mostly had praise for Andrew Wheeler, who has served as the agency’s acting head since Scott Pruitt’s resignation in July amid ethics scandals. The committee chairman, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., called Wheeler “very well-qualified” to take the job. But Democrats pressed Wheeler about his work as a lobbyist helping an influential coal magnate meet with Trump administration officials before his nomination to the EPA and his moves on deregulation and on what they said was his inattention to the growing dangers of climate change. “You seem to be consistently doing things that undermine the health and safety of this nation,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told Wheeler. Markey asked him why he was pulling back on regulations that proponents say protect human health and the environment. “I believe we are moving forward” on protections, Wheeler responded. Wheeler cited changes he had initiated to roll back future mileage standards for cars and autos and to ease Obama-era clampdowns on dirtier-burning coal-fired power plants. He said EPA staff, whom he did not identify, had concluded that those rollbacks would ultimately lead to health gains. Environmental groups and formal assessments from the EPA and other agencies have contested that, saying the changes would increase pollution and increase harm to people and the climate. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said the rollbacks in car mileage standards and toxic mercury emissions under Wheeler were examples of unsafe deregulation and went beyond what industries themselves wanted. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted Wheeler had failed to mention climate change in his initial remarks to lawmakers. “Do you agree that climate change is a global crisis?” Sanders asked, shouting at times. “I would not call it the greatest crisis,” Wheeler said. “I would call it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.” Wheeler told lawmakers that he had yet to read a massive government climate change report released late last year that emphasized man-made climate change was already underway. Wheeler said he had received one staff briefing so far on the climate change report. The work of the EPA and other government agencies, the report stresses the massive economic toll expected from increasingly severe wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather under climate change. Wheeler said the news media had seized upon “worst-case scenarios” of the climate report. “You are a former coal industry lobbyist that is sitting here,” Markey responded. “That’s the worst-case scenario, what you are proposing here” for easing Obama-era rules meant to clamp down on climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and other Republican lawmakers, by contrast, praised Wheeler for a move to remove federal protections for millions of miles of wetlands and waterways and other proposals. Republican lawmakers said the protections had burdened farmers and others. The grandson of a coal miner, Wheeler worked for the EPA in the 1990s and later as a longtime Republican Senate staffer. Democrats pressed Wheeler about his lobbying before joining the EPA, saying his work for coal companies should disqualify him from leading an agency that regulates coal. Wheeler’s lobbying clients included coal magnate Bob Murray, who pushed hard on the Trump administration after the 2016 elections to grant a series of breaks for the sagging domestic coal industry. Wheeler accompanied Murray to a March 2017 meeting to pitch Murray’s list of desired rule rollbacks and other breaks for coal to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Wheeler told senators that his main work for Murray had been on health benefits and pensions. “I did not work on the plan. I do not have a copy of it. I saw it briefly,” Wheeler said, referring to Murray’s wish list. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., displayed a blown-up version of a photo taken of the meeting with Perry, showing Wheeler at Murray’s side. A second photo showed Murray’s rollback plan in Wheeler’s hands. Murray had sought some of the coal breaks that the EPA under Wheeler has since acted on. That included Wheeler signing a rule easing federal regulation of toxic coal ash, redoing an Obama rule that pushed electricity providers to move away from dirtier-burning coal plants and targeting an Obama rule limiting emissions of toxic mercury from coal plants. A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed an ethics complaint Tuesday with the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General alleging that Wheeler’s oversight of those and other rollback proposals at EPA may have violated his government ethics pledge to abstain from regulatory decisions affecting his former lobbying client for at least two years. EPA spokesman John Konkus called the accusation “baseless” and “wrong” and said Wheeler works with EPA ethics officials and follows their guidance.

Answer: Democrats hit Trump EPA nominee on coal lobbying, rollbacks.


Question: Luke Miels, who joined GSK in September 2017 after a contract dispute with his former employer AstraZeneca, said picking the most promising projects and developing them quickly now takes precedence over spreading the risk of failure. “In the past, 10 programs were chosen, a budget for eight was allocated. Usually what happened was that time was the trade off that was made,” he said in an interview. “Now what we do is we pick five or six programs, and concentrate investment there.”   GSK, like rivals, was in the habit of testing new drugs first on patients who had run out of other treatment options. If successful, it would try patients at an earlier stage of their disease, replacing older, established treatments. In today’s market, where rivals in the United States and China catch up fast if a new class of drug shows promise, GSK has to run costly drug tests on humans in several settings at the same time, even if it means dropping other drug candidates. “Rather than do things sequentially, you do them in parallel, or as close to parallel as possible,” Miels said. GSK, which is battling to return to profit growth, has taken this approach for instance with an experimental drug that for now goes by the code name of GSK’916 against multiple myeloma, a common and incurable type of blood cancer. Likewise, GSK doubled down on its quest to bring a drug known as GSK’165 to market as a rheumatoid arthritis treatment, even after initial results in a mid-stage drug trial did not show a clear enough reading. “This drug has very interesting effects on pain. That could potentially reduce the use of opioids and pain meds,” Miels said. More trials will be run to make the pain argument more clearly, he added. GSK expects a decline of 5%-9% in adjusted earnings per share this year, excluding exchange rate moves, as it suffers from generic competition to its inhalable lung drug Advair and pressure from rival Gilead in HIV treatments. Miels said a tougher stance on drug prices by U.S. lawmakers and medical insurers was one of the reasons for the need for speed in bringing drugs to market - to try to remain ahead of competitors for as long as possible. At the same time, rapid growth in the Chinese market was spurring a more sophisticated healthcare system there, with local biotech groups quick to catch up with Western pioneers in drug development, producing similar drugs for their home market.

Answer: GSK pharma head flags need for speed in high-pressure drug market.


Question: Shares of Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc, which makes the drug, Iclusig, rose as much as 40 percent after news that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the more restricted use of on Friday. Iclusig was approved a year ago to treat chronic myeloid leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia in patients who had failed to respond to at least one other therapy. It was suspended on October 31 after being associated with a higher-than-expected risk of life-threatening blood clots and narrowing of blood vessels. The FDA said it approved a revised label for the drug, limiting its use to patients with a specific genetic mutation and to those who are unable to use alternative treatments such as Novartis AG’s Gleevec or Bristol Myers Squibb Co’s Sprycel. The drug’s label will note that vascular blockages, which have the potential to cause heart attacks, strokes and death, have occurred in at least 27 percent of patients treated with Iclusig. It will also warn of an increased risk of heart failure. “While this new restricted label will clearly cap Iclusig’s sales potential, we still believe it can be a meaningful drug,” Cory Kasimov, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, said in a research note. “The key question will now be whether Iclusig will be relegated to last line of defense (resulting in more modest sales potential) or will it begin to creep up the treatment algorithm.”  Doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs on an “off-label” basis for indications other than those approved by the FDA, though companies are not allowed to market them for such unapproved uses. Ariad said it will start selling the drug, its only approved product, from mid-January. Ariad’s chief executive, Harvey Berger, told analysts on a conference call that about 1,300 patients a year will be eligible for Iclusig under the new label, down from 2,500 previously. The drug is expected to generate sales of $315 million by 2019 according to the average estimate of three analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Iclusig costs at least $115,000 a year. The FDA is requiring the company to implement a risk management program to promote awareness of the risks associated with Iclusig. The company must also conduct additional trials to test different, potentially less toxic, doses of the drug. Dr. Richard Pazdur, head of the FDA’s cancer division, said in an interview that if a less toxic dose was to be identified, “it would be reasonable,” though speculative at this stage, to test Iclusig to another therapy for potential use in a broader patient population. Ariad’s Berger said he expects the company to begin the dosing trial in the second half of 2014. “We believe these requirements are straightforward and manageable,” he said. Ariad’s shares rose 24 percent to $6.85 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Earlier they rose as high as $7.75.

Answer:
Ariad to resume sales of cancer drug Iclusig, shares jump.