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.

Q: Business by its very nature is cut-throat; competitors rarely aid one another because one company’s success almost invariably comes at the expense of the other’s vitality. When such leg-ups occur, they are often inadvertent — the result of one firm’s having failed to take advantage of an opportunity that its competitor later cleaned up on. Such was the case when Mars, Inc. passed on the chance for its flagship product, M&Ms, to be the candy used in 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Its turn-down cleared the way for Hershey Foods Corporation to make a remarkable splash for its Reese’s Pieces. During production of E.T., Amblin Productions approached Mars, Inc. about a possible tie-in between M&Ms and the film. For whatever reason, Mars said “No” to the proposition. Many purported reasons for that negative response have been provided by a variety of sources: Mars decided it didn’t want its bite-size candy associated with an extraterrestrial living with an earth family, or it thought the film’s premise just a bit too otherworldly, or an unnamed M&M executive decided nobody would want to see a movie about an alien adopted by a lonely kid. (M&Ms did survive as the candy used in the 1982 William Kotzwinkle novelization of the film, however.) Lore adds its own details to flesh out stories, details that will cast the one who is perceived as having done something foolish in as absurd a light as possible. When that story is one of a poor business decision made by a large corporation, someone telling the tale is sure to state as rock-solid fact an explanation that is now clearly laughable. No one ever suggests that Mars might have already had its advertising budget locked for that year, or that it might have felt ill at ease at the prospect of dealing with a new advertising medium and the new people who went with it, or any other plausible and purely logical business reason for taking a pass on this offer. No, the “reason” offered in lore will always be something along the lines of “Mars didn’t think much of the planned movie and thus wanted to keep themselves separate from it,” a “reason” that casts the candymaker as unbelievably short-sighted given the breathtaking success of E.T. Whatever the reason for it, Mars’ “No” paved the way for Hershey’s “Yes.” The spurned offer was then tendered to Hershey, and — misgivings aside — that corporation went for it. Hershey did not pay to have Reese’s Pieces used in E.T., but it did agree to do a tie-in between the movie and the candy after the film was released. A deal was inked wherein Hershey Foods agreed to promote E.T. with $1 million of advertising; in return, Hershey could use E.T. in its own ads. Within two weeks of the movie’s premiere, Reese’s Pieces sales went through the roof. (Disagreement exists as to how far through the roof they went: Sales were variously described as having tripled, experienced an 85% jump, or increased by 65%). Whatever the numbers, though, Reese’s Pieces — up until then an underdog confection only faintly known by the U.S. candy-consuming public — were suddenly being consumed in great handfuls. And all thanks to a shy little alien lured from the bushes and into America’s hearts by a trail of peanut-butter-in-a-candy-coated-shell confections. Thus is the potential power of product placement. When it’s done right, it can make a product. Paid product placement in films has come to be one of the ordinary ways of things in Hollywood. Exxon paid $300,000 for its name to appear in Days of Thunder, Pampers paid $50,000 to be featured in Three Men and a Baby, and Cuervo Gold spent $150,000 for placement in Tequila Sunrise, according to Danny Thompson, president of Creative Entertainment Services, in a 1993 New York magazine interview. As for how effective the practice of product placement is, that same article quotes Joel Henrie, a partner at Motion Picture Placement, as saying: “Look what happened to Hermes scarves after Basic Instinct, Ray-Ban sunglasses after Risky Business, and suspenders after Michael Douglas wore them in Wall Street.” Not all product placement deals are “straight-fee” arrangements. There are actually three types of deals, the other two being the provision of costly merchandise (such as automobiles or appliances) for free just for the exposure (which accounts for about half of all placements), and the back-end promotion under which big corporations with huge promotional budgets aim for young audiences through tie-ins with popular films. In most films, product placement, while noticeable, is kept low-key. However, some Hollywood offerings have gone down in the annals of motion picture history as notorious examples of rampant commercialism. The 1988 snoozer Mac and Me could fairly be described as a ninety-minute advert for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, with an alien thrown in whenever things were running slow. Likewise, the 1987 film Leonard Part 6 was deemed by many to be a never-ending Coca-Cola commercial. But rampant product placement is not merely limited to forgettable films which did poorly at the box office, as 1999’s Runaway Bride proved. (In that film, everyone walks around with a copy of USA Today in his hands.) Product placement in movies is now a corporate fact of life, as are “bonehead” accounts of great marketing opportunities left to the other guy. One company’s gaffe becomes the cautionary tale passed along to those in all manner of industries because the message is universal: This could be us one day if we don’t maintain vigilance. Once again, folklore is called upon to teach by example what might not have effectively been learned from a book. In an odd way, true-life corporate instances of one man’s garbage turning out to be another man’s treasure are almost a rip on the standard Hollywood legend of (pick your favorite movie star) was offered the lead in (now unforgettable, hugely-popular film) but turned it down. Though that scenario has indeed played out a number of times in Tinseltown, it hasn’t happened nearly as often as is reported. In many cases, remembered tidbits of so-and-so’s having been mentioned merely in passing at a studio round-table of “Who could we get?” are mentally embroidered into memories of the role’s having been offered to the star, who waved it away. Or a bit of rumor is later remembered as fact, such as the case of Ronald Reagan, whose name was only kited as part of a press release designed to drum up interest in Casablanca  but is now widely believed to have been the studio’s first choice to play Rick Blaine — a role never intended for anyone but Humphrey Bogart.

A: M&Ms passed up the chance to be the candy used to lure the shy little alien from his hiding place in the 1982 blockbuster E.T., thereby letting one of the most successful instances of movie product placement fall into the hands of a competitor who benefited mightily from it.
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Q: The release, while loaded with information about the research, fails to mention costs related to this new approach at any point. This is in spite of the fact that the paper provides what’s necessary to fulfill this criterion. The study authors wrote: “The easy access to the tumor site, the absence of the need for surgical removal of the tissue containing the T cells, the numbers of cells obtained with the harvest, and the ability to expand products in all patients with a relatively short process at a reasonable cost contrast sharply with several limitations of TIL ACT” (a current therapeutic approach to the disease). The release does a good job of spelling out the results of this phase 1 trial by providing data showing that MILs can target and kill cancer cells. It shows that in more than half of the study’s patients, their cancers had shrunk by at least half. In 15 of the 22 patients, their cancers did not progress for nearly a year after the MILs therapy. This wasn’t a controlled study, so it’s unclear how these patients would have fared without the MILs treatment, and the release could have attempted to provide some insight on that point. But we’re pleased that the release focuses appropriately on the apparent safety of the approach, rather than trying to make claims about survival benefits that aren’t supportable by this kind of small, uncontrolled study. The release also explains that the research provides information suggesting which patients might benefit best from this approach, and that other research at this cancer center is centered on testing this approach on different forms of cancer. We’ll give this criterion a satisfactory rating since the release specifically spells out, “None of the participants had serious side effects from the MILs therapy.” However, the study is really too small, and the time span too short, to comment substantively on the possible harms that might be seen if and when the treatment is more widely used. The research paper actually makes the point that the new procedure doesn’t require the “surgical removal of tissue,” and the procedure can be done at bedside rather than an operating suite. But the removal of cells from the bone marrow is still an invasive procedure that carries its own risk of infection or other problems. The release would have benefited from at least mentioning this aspect. The release makes a very good effort to objectively describe a technically complicated trial. It defines the trial at least twice as being “small” and calls it a “pilot,” suggesting that caution is appropriate when considering the results. It effectively explains the process involved in the treatments, including what was learned regarding the growth of cells in the lab after harvesting. It also points to the fact that while tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) can only be retrieved from a quarter of the patient candidates for this technique, MILs were obtained from all of the patients in this study, suggesting that they may be a better tool for this therapy. Describing multiple myeloma as “the second most common cancer originating in the blood” doesn’t add much to our understanding of this disease. However, other statistics provide context regarding the scope of the problem in the United States. We’ll give it a pass. The funding sources for this research are listed in an end note in the release. No conflict of interest information is provided in the release, although the research paper discloses no conflicts. The release does mention that other forms of this adoptive T cell therapy use different cells, suggesting that other approaches are possible. The release also notes, “Three days before the injections of expanded MILs, patients received high doses of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, standard treatments for multiple myeloma.” The release points out that “several U.S. cancer centers have conducted similar experimental treatments” but adds that Johns Hopkins is the only one using the MIL cells. It also points to several other ongoing clinical trials at Hopkins that build on the findings of this small study. Using the terms “pilot” and “experimental,” the release signals that availability is very limited. We like the fact that the headline itself defines this as a “pilot” clinical trial and that the lede says that it is “what is believed to be the first small clinical trial of its kind.”  Those kinds of qualifiers both declare the specifics of the research and also provide informative caveats, allowing the reader to gauge how much credence to give to the findings. All too many other medical releases fail to provide this measured approach. This release is conservative throughout in its choice of language in describing this research which, based on its findings, might be ripe for exaggeration.

A: Pilot clinical trial finds injected immune cells safe in multiple myeloma patients
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Q: "As physicians grapple with the best ways to treat patients infected with the coronavirus, one treatment that has gained increasing attention is convalescent plasma therapy. This therapy involves transfusing blood plasma from recovered coronavirus patients into a sick patient. The plasma contains a specific antibody that helps the immune system fight the virus. The idea is to help give seriously ill patients an immune-system boost so they can better fight off the virus. COVID-19 convalescent plasma therapy is considered as an investigational product by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Jamie N. Nadler, the medical director of quality and patient safety for Buffalo General Medical Center and Gates Vascular Institute in upstate New York, recently told the Buffalo News that there’s some evidence that it could be an effective way to treat COVID-19. ""There have been small trials and small attempts around the world that seem to have had some degree of success,"" Nadler said. ""So it's worth trying as long as it's done correctly."" Nadler is right: We found two studies of convalescent plasma therapy that have shown  at least initial promise with COVID-19 patients, although experts caution that more investigation is needed. (Nadler did not respond to an inquiry for this article.) Convalescent plasma therapy has a long history. It was developed by Paul Ehrlich and Emil von Behring for treatment of diphtheria, a finding that was recognized in 1901 with the first Nobel Prize for medicine, epidemiologist Dr. Ian Lipkin, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told CNBC. More recently, it was used against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, an infection with similarities to COVID-19 that emerged in Asia in the early 2000s. In one study in Hong Kong during a SARS outbreak, a hospital treated 80 patients with convalescent plasma. Among the treated patients, the study showed a higher discharge rate prior to day 14 of the illness: 58.3% became well enough to be discharged, compared with 15.6% of those who did not receive the treatment. However, patients suffering from Ebola — a different kind of virus in the filovirus family — did not experience positive results from convalescent plasma treatment. A Chinese study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, described a study treating five critically ill COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma. All five patients, ranging from 36 to 65 years old, began the study while on ventilators. Following the transfusion, the authors reported, four of the five patients’ body temperatures normalized within three days. Other key metrics, including viral loads, improved within 12 days. The hospital discharged three of the five patients. The remaining two were in stable condition 37 days after the transfusion. The authors concluded that this represented an ""improvement,"" but cautioned that the limited sample size and study design precluded ""a definitive statement about the potential effectiveness of this treatment."" Another Chinese study found similar results. It has not yet been peer reviewed but has been published online. In the study, 10 patients with severe cases received a dose of convalescent plasma. Within three days, the viral load became undetectable in seven patients, with no adverse effects. In addition, fever, cough, shortness of breath and chest pain disappeared or significantly improved in all 10 patients within one to three days of the transfusion. The authors concluded that the therapy was ""well tolerated and could potentially improve the clinical outcomes"" in severe COVID-19 cases. However, they added, questions on the optimal dose and timing need further investigation. ""Just as COVID-19 has taken us back to classic methods for outbreak containment like isolation, through a novel use we are rediscovering the lifesaving potential of a classic strategy like plasma therapy,"" Lipkin said. Experts say that convalescent plasma therapy is promising, but much more work is needed. ""There have not been any breakthroughs recently,"" said Jessica Donington, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and chief of the thoracic surgery section. But, she added, ""it all has been going on very quickly,"" with larger clinical trials in the works. Nadler said that ""there have been small trials and small attempts around the world"" to test convalescent plasma therapy for coronavirus patients, and they ""seem to have had some degree of success."" We found two Chinese studies that have found initial success, though more research is needed to confirm these results more broadly."

A:
“Small trials” to test convalescent plasma therapy for coronavirus patients “seem to have had some degree of success.”
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