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: Mustapha Redouane happily accepted the arrangement. He knew his mother’s idea would silence the school’s worries about his condition, a rare genetic disorder called xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP, which can make sun rays and other sources of ultraviolet light extremely damaging to the skin and eyes. The disorder is more common in North Africa than much of the world. “I hate the sun anyways. It gives me blisters,” he said, sitting on his mother’s lap, his face covered with the dark brown freckles that the school director considered a distraction to other students. Now 8, Mustapha has already had 11 operations to remove cancerous growths on his skin. His family is among thousands around the world struggling with XP, and increasingly sharing advice and seeking new treatments. In Morocco, families are also fighting for recognition, government help — and the simple right to go to school. The disorder affects about 1 in 10,000 people in North Africa — more than 10 times the rate in Europe and about 100 times the rate in the United States, according to Dr. Kenneth Kraemer, who researches XP at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Because the disorder is inherited, XP is more common in populations where marriage between relatives is high, Kraemer said. Affected children inherit two copies of a mutated gene, one from each parent. A 2016 Moroccan government study estimates about 15% of marriages are between family members. Living in a country where the sun shines year-round makes them more susceptible to skin cancers that can be caused by the disorder, said Fatima El Fatouikai, pediatric dermatology specialist at the Ibn Rochd University Hospital in Casablanca. Without protection, few XP patients in Morocco live beyond their teenage years, El Fatouikai said. It is particularly challenging in developing countries, where an awareness of the disorder and access to treatments are scarce, and in poor, rural communities where people spend more time outside. Outside of El Fatoikai’s office, families coming from all around Morocco sit in a waiting room eager for their names to be called. There is a rumor about a new XP treatment. The truth is, she says, “We only have prevention as a possible treatment. These children ... have to avoid even minimum sun exposure.” The main prevention measures: avoiding the sun and wearing protective clothing, face shields and sunscreen. Fatimazehra Belloucy, 25, has dealt with skin cancer and other problems because of XP. “If only people made it easier. Their words hurt. I feel entirely alienated,” she said, describing how she faces scared looks and hateful comments as she passes by. Her family limits interactions with her, fearful that the disease is contagious. “No one would take care of me, so I had to do it myself,” said Belloucy, who received her high school diploma and is now enrolled in university. She hopes to land work helping with the disease. Most Moroccan children with XP don’t continue their education. While U.S. schools install window filters for XP pupils and otherwise adapt to their needs, such accommodations are rare in Morocco. “It hurts me that I have to see little kids suffer because of lack of awareness,” says Habib El Ghazaoui, who quit his veterinary job and made it his life’s mission to raise awareness and help children with XP after learning that his daughter Fatimazehra had the disorder. His daughter, now a young adult raising awareness on social media, has had 50 operations for cancerous growths on her tongue, eyelids and elsewhere. She stays indoors and mostly sleeps during the day but, as the sun sets, she goes to parks and cafes, determined to lead a normal life. Ghazaoui leads the Association for Solidarity with Children of the Moon from his house in the town of Mohammedia. He juggles his time between visiting families, distributing donations of creams and masks, providing the Casablanca hospital with data and pressuring the government to take action. XP support groups are increasingly sharing advice online. They held an exceptional meeting in London last year to share “hundreds of practical hints” about hoods, window protections or meters to measure light — and even a French-designed face shield with a fan in it, said NIH researcher Deborah Tamura. The donations from Ghazaoui’s group reach families like those of Said El Mohamadi, a tailor in the city of Salé, whose 6-year-old daughter has the condition. His family is still debating the topic of school. “She’s sad, but I can’t risk taking her to school where there isn’t any kind of protection,” he said. “But she needs an education,” her mother Maria El Maroufi pleads. ___ Nadine Achoui-Lesage and Mosa’ab Elshamy in Casablanca and Mohammedia contributed.

SOLUTION: When light is lethal: Moroccans struggle with skin disorder.

PROBLEM: File photo shows a young carer holding the hands of an elderly woman in a residential home for the elderly in Planegg near Munich June 19, 2007. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle The study, reported on Sunday in the journal BioMed Central BMC Neurology, involved 12 patients who had greatly improved language recall shortly after treatment with Enbrel, or etanercept, an anti-inflammatory drug co-marketed by Amgen and Wyeth. “We often see verbal effects within a few minutes of the first dose,” said Dr. Edward Tobinick, director of the Institute for Neurological Research, a private medical group inc., in Los Angeles, who led the study. Tobinick invented and holds several patents on a special method of injecting the drug into the neck. He said he charges anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000 per patient for the treatments. In January, Tobinick’s report on a single patient, and release of a striking video, drew the attention of the Alzheimer’s Association, which released a statement expressing concern. “People with Alzheimer’s and their families may place undue value on this new finding based on the dramatic language used in its description and the apparent immediate effect,” the group said. “We need to see work in other laboratories by scientists without financial interest in the product,” it added. Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman of the Alzheimer’s Association’s medical and science council, said the latest study, done at Tobinick’s clinic, does not offer that independent confirmation. “It’s still not a proper trial,” Gandy said. Tobinick believes the drug may work in the brain by blocking an excess of tumor necrosis factor-alpha or TNF-alpha, which may affect communication in the brain. The study looked at language difficulties, such as in finding words, in 12 patients with mild-to-severe Alzheimer’s disease who were administered etanercept weekly for six months. “There was a significant improvement in the majority of the verbal measures that were studied. The remainder showed a tendency toward improvement, which was not significant,” Tobinick said in a telephone interview. He said the study provides evidence that “excess TNF, in the Alzheimer brain, may offer a new way to address this language dysfunction.”   Tobinick acknowledged the study is limited because people knew they were getting the drug. Alzheimer’s patients in such open-label studies often show improvement. “Placebo effect is an enormous problem in open-label studies,” said Dr. Scott Turner, incoming director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. Turner said the true test must come from a more scientifically rigorous double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. In such studies, patients receive either a dummy treatment or an active agent, and neither the doctor nor the patient knows which. Amgen has also expressed concern about the research, claiming there has been insufficient evidence so far. “This off-label, unapproved treatment, administered by Dr. Edward Tobinick, is not supported nor endorsed by Amgen,” the company said in April on its Web site. A video showing one woman's response to the drug in a sister study can be found at : here

SOLUTION: Drug restores speech in Alzheimer's; experts worry.

PROBLEM: The release includes the idea of costs, but without using any numbers. The two mentions of cost are here: “However, reports of rare HPV-negative, Pap-test positive cancers are motivating continued use of both tests (cotesting) despite increased testing costs.” and here: “Researchers were searching for realistic performance data to quantify the additional benefit of the Pap test component of cotesting, as the costs of intensive screening of all women using two screening tests are substantial.” The readers are not given any framework in which to judge how much more co-testing may cost than single-testing by either of the methods discussed. We are also not given any society-wide idea of what we all might save if both tests were not routinely administered. The release is comparing two different screening methods, which both have benefits, to using either one of them alone. We were especially pleased that the release included a clear description of the benefit using absolute, rather than just a relative, risk number. “Given the rarity of cancers among screened women, the contribution of the Pap test to screening translated to earlier detection of at most five cases per million women per year. Two-thirds (67%) of women found to have cancer up to 10 years of follow-up at Kaiser Permanente were detected by the first cotest performed.” Besides this number, the release included specific numbers for benefits of each test. “HPV-negative/Pap test-positive results preceded only small fractions of cases of precancer (3.6%) and cancer (5.9%); these cancers were more likely to be regional or distant stage than other cases.” The release doesn’t directly explain the harms of cancer screening. The release addresses the harm of omitting one test, but this wasn’t enough to meet our standard. The release states that HPV is “more sensitive than the Pap test for detecting precancer.” But it doesn’t discuss the flip side, which is that many pre-cancers may not go on to become cancer even though all are treated. The release frames the study done by Kaiser Permanente of Northern California as “the most extensive experience of HPV testing incorporated into routine screening in the world.” More than a million women were tested since 2003. There were 623 cancers and 5,369 pre-cancers. Researchers examined these to judge the relative contribution of the Pap and HPV test to identifying cases. These details give readers plenty of information to judge the quality of evidence. There was no disease mongering. The funder (NIH/National Cancer Institute) is listed on a sidebar of EurekAlert! where the release is hosted. We encourage releases to also include funders in the release itself. There do not appear to be any conflicts. The release is about comparing alternative screenings, either co-testing or HPV alone. The report does not address Pap alone (recommended for women under 30 years old). It is implied that these tests are widely available in the US. The release addresses novelty with this summary of the work: “the most extensive experience of HPV testing incorporated into routine screening in the world.” The long-term study comparing outcomes from two long used screening tests is novel. We found no unjustifiable language.

SOLUTION:
HPV testing is better than the Pap test at detecting cervical cancer