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.

Paragraph: The article states that acupuncture costs $45 to $100 per session. It does not say how this compares to other treatments and whether the cost of care is the same, more or less than alternatives. The story states the proportion of patients who successfully responded to each therapy, and clearly explains that “real” acupuncture was no better than sham needling. But it does not define success or otherwise quantify how much people improved clinically in either relative or absolute terms. For a treatment to be considered successful, a patient must have reported either a 33% improvement in pain or as little as a 12% improvement in function during an interview conducted over the telephone 6 months after enrollment. Nonethless we’ll grade this criterion as satisfactory. The story did not mention harms from any of the treatments patients received. Previous research suggests that acupuncture poses few risks when performed with sterile, disposable needles. The article describes the largest randomized controlled trial to date investigating the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating chronic low back pain, and reports its published results. It discusses the three treatment groups studied and potential reasons for the outcomes observed. There are no obvious elements of disease mongering. The story explains that the study participants were people with chronic low back pain. These results wouldn’t apply to other back pain conditions. The article cites one of the study’s coauthors and two physicians who appear to be users and/or proponents of complementary therapies. It would have been interesting to hear from a skeptical observer. The story lists the therapies received by patients assigned to the conventional medicine group. The literature suggests that these treatments generally provide very modest benefits. The article does not mention other therapies that may be effective for managing chronic pain and improving flexibility and strength. These include cognitive therapy alone or in combination with intensive exercise and strengthening. Acupuncture is estimated to be the third most popular complementary therapy for chronic low back pain. Though the article does not say much about its availability, readers are likely to be familiar with it. The story notes that this is the largest study yet of acupuncture for chronic back pain, suggesting that the treatment is not new. There is no obvious use of text from a press release. Claim: Acupuncture, real or fake, called best for lower back pain
This article reports on the largest randomized controlled trial to date investigating the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating chronic low back pain. It explains that both acupuncture and sham needling are more effective than conventional medical therapies, but that “fake acupuncture works nearly as well as the real thing.”       In addition to describing the quality of the evidence, the story mentions several other treatment options, tells the reader the cost of acupuncture, and hints at its novelty. The story neglects to mention harms. (A recent systematic review reinforces the study’s finding that acupuncture poses few risks; see Spine 2005;30:944-63). And it also provides an incomplete picture of the treatment’s apparent benefits. Although it notes the proportion of patients who improved with each therapy, it does not define success or otherwise quantify how much people improved clinically–in either relative or absolute terms. For a treatment to be considered successful, for example, a patient could have reported as little as a 12% improvement in function during an interview conducted over the telephone 6 months after enrollment. This is important information if people are to weigh the apparent benefit of a therapy against its cost. The article cites one of the study’s coauthors and two physicians who appear to be users and/or proponents of complementary therapies. They attempt to explain why needling seems to work. To provide some balance, the study’s coauthor suggests that the apparent benefit could merely be the result of patients’ expectations of improvement from acupuncture, on the one hand, and of poor results from conventional medicine on the other. (Unfortunately, the researchers did not measure patients’ expectations.) It would have been interesting to hear from others. Some might point out that the new study shows that acupuncture and sham needling are only more effective than treatments that are not themselves very effective. Others might make the case that acupuncture provides no specific treatment effect and is unethical to use—because it could be construed as prescribing a placebo. People with chronic low back pain are desperate for anything that will help. When a large new study provides apparently strong evidence to buttress a therapy that previously had little high-quality evidence to support it, readers might also benefit from more context. A major systematic review that analyzed 35 randomized trials involving 2861 patients recently concluded that acupuncture appears to confer modest, short-term pain relief, but that the quality of the studies was not very good. The reviewers were careful not to overstate the benefits of acupuncture (Spine 2005;30:944-63). Overall, this was a good article that would have been helped by some more context.

Paragraph: The story does not mention the cost of mammography (or of follow up tests and treatments) to the individual, or, collectively, to society. And these costs are substantial. Based on the results of this study, 2,500 women would have to be screened every other year for a decade in order to prevent one death from breast cancer. As the story points out, during that same time 1,000 of those women would have at least one false alarm and 500 would undergo an unnecessary biopsy, thus adding to the price tag. On balance, this story does a fair job of describing the benefits of screening mammography as seen in this study. It reports the apparent 10 percent reduction in breast cancer deaths, while also pointing out that because relatively few women in the 50-69 age group die of breast cancer, that reduction can also be described as cutting the 10-year risk of death from 4.4 per 1,000 women to 4 per 1,000. The second statistic helps counteract popular assumptions about how many middle-aged women die from breast cancer. However, the framing of a story – and who gets the last word – sometimes overwhelms evidence-based explanations earlier in the story. That almost happened with this story, which gives the final word to an advocate of annual breast cancer screening for all women beginning by age 40, which is just the sort of blanket recommendation this latest study calls into question. The story includes a comment that because mammograms detect lumps that would not have become life-threatening, five to 15 women may be treated for every one whose life is saved by treatment. The story oversimplifies the methods used by researchers, saying they compared “women who were similar in most ways, except that one group received mammograms and the other didn’t,” without explaining that this was not a randomized trial where some women were assigned to screening and others weren’t, but rather an observational study that looked at data on women during a 9-year period when Norway phased in mammography region by region. The story does alert readers to some of the limitations of the study: one, that a longer follow-up period might have shown more benefit to screening and, two, that the researchers had no information on whether any of the women received mammograms outside of the national screening program. It’s a tossup for us to grade and, as we do in most such cases, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt. Claim: Mammogram benefits more modest than doctors thought
However, it does not explain to readers what is new or different about this study compared to earlier reports. Also, the final word in the story goes to an expert who touts benefits of mammography screening that clash with what was seen in this study. By comparing this story with, for example, the Philadelphia Inquirer and WebMD stories, you see how some of the gaps we’ve identified were addressed by competitors, giving readers a more complete and helpful story.

Paragraph: A 38-year-old man from Zunyi city died last Thursday, Xinhua said, citing health authorities in Guizhou. Xinhua said it was the first human case of H7N9 in Guizhou this year. Last Friday, China said a 38-year-old man in eastern Fujian province died from H7N9. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said last week that seven more people in China had been found to be infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu in the previous week, taking to around 150 the total number of cases so far. The H7N9 bird flu emerged last year in China and has infected around 150 people there and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, killing at least 45 of them. Experts say there is no evidence as yet of any easy or sustained person-to person transmission of the strain. But an early scientific analysis of probable transmission of the new flu from person to person, published last August, gave the strongest proof yet that it can at times jump between people and so could cause a human pandemic. The WHO said the source of the human infections was still being investigated. It stressed that it does not advise any special screening for people going in and out of China, nor does it recommend any travel or trade curbs. Claim: China reports second H7N9 bird flu death in a week.

China reported one more death from the H7N9 strain of bird flu in southwestern Guizhou province, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, in the second death from the virus in the past week.