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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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In January, China approved imports of a new genetically modified soybean variety — Enlist E3 soybeans jointly made by Corteva Agriscience, a division of DowDupont and seed company MS Technologies — that can withstand the herbicide 2,4-D. “This is great news for U.S. soybean growers,” said Joseph Merschman, president of MS Technologies in a February press release. “This announcement clears the way for even more soybean growers to experience the high-yielding elite genetics and exceptional weed control offered by the Enlist E3 soybean system.” DowAgrosciences declined to comment for this story. ___ The nonprofit news outlet Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News. ___ The herbicide — 2,4-D — was one of the active ingredients in Agent Orange and has been shown to drift miles away from where it’s applied. The U.S. used Agent Orange during the Vietnam War to eliminate crops and forest covers for enemy troops. The International Agency for Research on Cancer named the weed killer a possible human carcinogen. Studies have also linked 2,4-D to endocrine disruption, disturbing estrogen, androgen and thyroid hormones. Over the past two decades, a growing number of weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, the most popular weed killer in the world, sold as Monsanto’s Roundup. In response, agribusiness companies, like Dow and Monsanto, have introduced new genetically modified varieties of soybeans that can be sprayed with other herbicides that kill glyphosate-resistant weeds. The United States exports $14 billion worth of soybeans to China, or one of every four rows of soybeans, annually, according to the American Soybean Association, an organization of soybean producers. Trade tensions with China and higher import taxes on U.S. soybeans have thwarted imports recently. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has projected that increased 2,4-D use due to the Enlist system would likely increase the amount of the weed killer sprayed between 200 and 600 percent by 2020. Already, it’s one of the most commonly used herbicides in the United States, used in conventional agriculture including corn and is one of the most commonly used home and garden herbicides. In 2016, the USDA estimated that farmers used 44.4 million pounds of 2,4-D on crops across the U.S. “This is just going to absolutely be a disaster,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization that works to protect endangered species. The Enlist approval gives farmers looking to manage glyphosate-resistant weeds a new tool at a time when the dominant soybean system — Monsanto’s Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans — has caused widespread issues in the Midwest and South. Those soybeans are genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by dicamba, a volatile herbicide that has drifted off target and damaged millions of acres of non-resistant soybeans, other crops and natural areas since the Environmental Protection Agency approved new versions of the weed killer for use on soybeans in November 2016. More than 90 percent of soybeans grown in the United States are genetically modified, but there are only three major systems that are commonly used to combat glyphosate-resistant weeds: Monsanto’s Xtend, DowDupont’s Enlist and BASF’s LibertyLink soybeans, which are resistant to glufosinate, another herbicide. Enlist soybeans can also be sprayed with glufosinate. The extent to which 2,4-d-resistant soybeans will be planted is unknown, largely because of the widespread market penetration by dicamba-resistant soybeans. Company officials estimated the product will have at least 10 percent market share by 2020, which would be about 9 million acres in the United States. In two years, dicamba went from being sprayed on zero acres of soybeans to more than 40 million acres. Aaron Hager, an associate professor at the University of Illinois, said many farmers have adopted Monsanto’s Xtend soybeans as a protection measure against drift from dicamba. “It’s going to be difficult for (Enlist) to gain market penetration partially because of how well entrenched dicamba already is,” Hager said. The main question for farmers considering Enlist is whether drift from dicamba will damage Enlist soybeans, said Charles Benbrook, a visiting professor at the University of Newcastle who has spent decades studying pesticides at various institutions. “One of the huge questions is, is there any cross resistance? Will they be any less vulnerable to damage from drifting dicamba and vice versa?” Benbrook said. Benbrook said they may be able to coexist. Though 2,4-D and dicamba are different pesticides, their similarities might allow some cross-resistance in genetically modified soybeans, Benbrook said. Both dicamba and 2,4-D have been used for decades on other crops but at a smaller scale. Both are broadleaf herbicides that kill plants in similar ways, mimicking natural plant hormones called auxins and causing abnormal growth. Like the new version of dicamba, the new 2,4-D strain approved for usage on soybeans is designed to be less volatile than past versions. If there is no cross-resistance, Benbrook projected that Corteva, a division of DowDupont, and Bayer, which owns Monsanto, will likely have to come up with a deal to put the resistant genes in both company’s systems, increasing the price for farmers. Donley said both herbicides, having similar modes of actions and a propensity to drift, will insert an element of doubt on what caused drift damage. States across the Midwest and South have received a record number of pesticide misuse complaints from farmers since dicamba was allowed on soybeans. Already, some scientists have speculated that 2,4-D is causing some of the alleged dicamba damage. “Industry is going to use this to say, ‘how do you know it’s our product?’” Donley said. “It’s going to enable the industry to do what they do best, which is sow doubt in the public.” Environmental groups argue the transition to 2,4-D-resistant soybeans, and the increased spraying that goes along with it, is indicative of the problems with industrial agriculture. Jennifer Sass, senior scientist at the Natural Resource Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, has researched the human health effects of 2,4-D, and said that the herbicide can cause disruptions in the endocrine system. She said that the link to cancer isn’t quite as established. Though 2,4-D is considered a “possible carcinogen,” the research isn’t quite as strong, but that’s because of the difficulties in collecting data, she said. “Those are all data and red flags, but there’s so many reasons to get off this treadmill. Waiting for more confidence in the cancers means waiting for more farmers and pesticide applicators to get cancer, and I don’t think anyone wants to collect our data that way,” Sass said. In some places, some types of glyphosate-resistant weeds, like Palmer amaranth, are already becoming resistant to 2,4-D and dicamba. Bill Freese, a senior scientist at the Center for Food Safety, which is a nonprofit group focused on the environmental effects of food production, said, in addition to human health issues, more spraying will lead to environmental issues, like the killing of pollinators and wild plants, he said. Donley, at the Center for Biological Diversity, has documented those problems with glyphosate and dicamba, especially when it comes to monarch butterflies and milkweed. He said more spraying will lead to more resistance and new herbicides. “It’s a poor answer to a complex situation, and it’s going to be getting worse,” Donley said. “In five-to-10 years, we’re going to be looking for the next herbicide. History tells us what’s going to happen in this case. It’s kind of crazy we’re even considering going here.”
answer:
Last year it was dicamba, this year it’s 2,4-D.


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A member of a small county commission in Florida became an online laughingstock after video spread of him endorsing a widely-debunked cure for COVID-19 (a.k.a. the “coronavirus”) by a right-wing “news” outlet to his colleagues.During the March 20 2020 meeting, Okeechobee County commissioner Bryant Culpepper reassured his colleagues that his information was legitimate because he saw it on One America News Network (OAN or OANN), which he described as “the new Fox News.”“There’s a lot of baloney out there on social media. You’ve gotta be really careful. But I only brought it up because it came from a pretty reliable source,” Culpepper said.According to a story he saw on the channel, he said, an OAN guest claimed that it was possible to beat COVID-19 by training a hair dryer on one’s face at a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit. (This is not true. )“In this interview with one of the foremost doctors who has studied the coronavirus, [he] said that the nasal passages and the nasal membranes are the coolest part of the body,” Culpepper said. “That’s why the virus tends to go there until it then becomes healthy enough to go into the lungs.” (This is also not true. )But using the hair dryer, he said, would cause the virus to fall apart. “You hold a blow dryer in front of your face and you inhale with your nose, and it kills all the viruses in your nose,” Culpepper claimed, falsely.He also indirectly promoted the “cure” on his own Facebook page, linking to local coverage of the meeting without mentioning that it covered his remarks:The claims that he said OAN and the “foremost doctor” were promoting have been roundly and completely debunked. And in reality, OAN is far from “pretty reliable.” In fact, as the media analysis site Media Bias/Fact Check reported in reviewing the California-based channel, it’s exactly the opposite:We rate One America News Far right biased based on story selection that consistently favors the Right and Mixed for factual reporting due to promotion of conspiracies, lack of sourcing and a few failed fact checks. OAN is one failed fact check away from moving to the Questionable Source list.The review cited an AdWeek story saying that staff members felt that the channel’s billionaire founder, Robert Herring Sr., had become a “de facto news director” who pushed OAN into becoming supportive of United States President Donald Trump’s run for office in 2016:According to internal emails, Herring has directed his channel to push Trump’s candidacy, scuttle stories about police shootings, encourage antiabortion stories, minimize coverage of Russian aggression, and steer away from the new president’s troubles, according to more than a dozen current and former producers, writers and anchors, as well as internal emails from Herring and his top news executives.Besides getting local coverage, Culpepper’s attempt to paint the “blow dryer” cure as legitimate was shared on social media:Okeechobee County Commissioner Bryant Culpepper at emergency meeting says you can kill coronavirus by holding a blow dryer up to your nose after he saw it on “reliable source” OANN, warns “there’s a lot of baloney out there on social media” #BecauseFlorida pic.twitter.com/n9dGDBQ4WW— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) March 22, 2020According to the Friendly Atheist blog, which covers religious affairs, Culpepper reacted angrily at first to the criticism:No one is holding a gun to your head to do anything you do not want to do but for some they don’t have alot [sic] of options. All this wonderful Science you believe in yet Thousands die everyday from Cancer, Lukemia, ALS so why haven’t they been cured with all the Scientist working on for years Go ahead laugh all you want and feel like fools when I am proven Right.However, he apologized on his Facebook page on March 22 2020. “I am Heartfully Sorry for comments I made on Social Media,” he wrote:I was only trying to give comfort to those in Okeechobee who have no insurance to treat there [sic] families. I should have ignored the comments that I perceived as hateful and the embarrassment I caused to my Fellow Commissioners and our Administrator And [sic] her staff. I will not offer anymore suggestions unless they are tried and proven.Given the huge amount of disinformation circulating both on and off social media and the credulity with which certain officials are repeating it, it is probably best to receive health guidance from medical experts, not public figures without expertise who regularly quote ideas from far-right television networks without credibility.
answer:
A member of the Okeechobee County Commission in Florida promoted a claim that using a blow dryer could cure people of COVID-19.


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Now aged 56, two years after his retina was deliberately infected with a virus carrying a gene to correct a protein deficiency that was destroying its cells, he is a regular on the tennis court and has a successful career in law. “For the last 30 years I’ve been living under the insidious inevitability of going blind,” Stroh told reporters at a briefing about his experimental treatment. “Now there is a very real prospect I will continue to be able to see.”  Stroh is one of a handful of patients with an inherited cause of progressive blindness called choroideremia who took part in an early stage trial of a potential gene therapy treatment designed to correct a genetic defect that means retina cells gradually die. Although the results are from only six patients in a very early stage Phase I trial, researchers said they suggest more studies should be done to see if similar gene therapies could be developed for other more common genetic causes of blindness such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Choroideremia is caused by a mutation in a gene that makes a protein called REP1. It affects an estimated 1 in 50,000 people and causes sufferers - mainly men - to lose their sight gradually as the cells in the retina degenerate. There is currently no licensed treatment for the condition and eventually the photoreceptor cells - the rods and cones in the retina that respond to light by sending signals to the brain - die completely, leading to blindness by middle age. In the trial, a team led by Robert MacLaren of the University of Oxford, a consultant surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, injected the patients’ retinas with a vector - in this case a genetically engineered virus - to deliver a corrective copy of the gene to the appropriate part of the eye. “The virus has to be delivered to the target cells, which are the cells of the retina,” MacLaren explained. To do that, the surgeon performs an operation similar to cataract surgery in which the patient’s retina is detached and lifted, and the virus is then injected underneath with a fine needle. “The virus goes in, infects the cells and puts the protein back into the cells - so we’re harnessing the capability of the virus to infect cells and deliver its DNA,” he said. “This is the exciting thing about gene therapy,” said MacLaren, whose trial results were published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday. “We’re talking about a single one-off genetic correction ... that has long-standing effects that so far have not been shown to diminish.”  The results showed that of the six patients treated - each of them only in one eye so the other could act as a comparison - the two with the least good sight before the gene therapy had significantly improved vision six months later. In the other four patients, whose vision was only slightly impaired before treatment as they were at earlier stages of the condition, the results confirmed the gene therapy is safe, with the virus delivering its DNA without damaging the retina. “It is still too early to know if the ... treatment will last indefinitely,” MacLaren said. “But we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained for as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case.”  He stressed that the therapy is still in the experimental stage, with more trials likely to take up to five years before it could be submitted for a licence with a view to making it available to all patients. “If we were able to treat people early, get them in their teens or late childhood, we’d be getting the virus in before their vision is lost,” he said. “If the treatment works, we would be able to prevent them from going blind.”
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Experimental gene therapy improves sight in patients going blind.