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: On June 21 2020, the Facebook page “The Runic Witch” shared the following meme, which described a garden in England “dedicated entirely to plants that … can kill you”:At the bottom of the meme was a photograph of a black gate, the archway of which read “The Poison Garden.” Both doors featured a skull and crossbones symbol and the words “these plants can kill.” Text at the top read:There’s a garden in England dedicated entirely to plants that are deadly and can kill you. It’s the most dangerous garden in the world. It holds over 100 killers [such as hemlock], strychnine, and nightshade.The Alnwick Garden is a “complex of formal gardens” not far from the Scottish border. It contains a number of sub-sections, including a massive treehouse, a cherry orchard, a bamboo labyrinth, and water features:Number nine on the above “Map Key” is marked to the left of the center fountain, and a rendering of the iron gates seen in the meme is visible.The Poison Garden was added in 2005, and a page on the Garden’s visitor site says of the deadlier plant section:The Alnwick Garden plays host to the small but deadly Poison Garden—filled exclusively with around 100 toxic, intoxicating, and narcotic plants. The boundaries of the Poison Garden are kept behind black iron gates, only open on guided tours.Visitors are strictly prohibited from smelling, touching, or tasting any plants, although some people still occasionally faint from inhaling toxic fumes while walking in the garden.An archived version of the page shed a bit more light onto the garden’s creation:It’s not often that the Home Office becomes involved with plants in the setting of a public garden, but in this instance a number of the ‘inmates’ have to have their very own license in order to be there at all.Many of the plants are already well-known for their medicinal properties, but as its creator, the Duchess of Northumberland said:‘I wondered why so many gardens around the world focused on the healing power of plants rather than their ability to kill… I felt that most children I knew would be more interested in hearing how a plant killed, how long it would take you to die if you ate it and how gruesome and painful the death might be.’Another since updated section, titled “Intoxicating inhabitants,” described some of the plants growing in the garden as the ones mentioned in the meme:There are over 100 plants of varying deadliness grown in the Poison Garden. Some of the plants are beautiful despite being deadly, and other look so harmless it is hard to imagine their dangerous, even fatal, qualities.Nux vomica’s Latin name implies much, but it perhaps rings more bells as strychnine. Interestingly, hemlock, a poison in its own right, can be used as an antidote to Strychnine, but don’t tell Socrates, who was sent to his death with a cup of hemlock.Those of a certain age will be familiar with Castor Oil, which is made from the plant Ricinus communis, but a single seed from the same plant will kill an adult in the most horrible way. Ricin causes nausea, severe vomiting, convulsions and subsequent disintegration of the kidneys, liver and spleen…In 2014, Smithsonian Magazine profiled the Poison Garden and spoke to Jane Percy, the Duchess of Northumberland about the macabre project’s inspiration:The duchess thought she might want to include an apothecary garden, but a trip to Italy set her on a slightly different course. After visiting the infamous Medici poison garden, the duchess became enthralled with the idea of creating a garden of plants that could kill instead of heal. Another trip—this one to the archeological site of the largest hospital in medieval Scotland, where the duchess learned about soporific sponges soaked in henbane, opium and hemlock used to anesthetize amputees during 15th-century surgeries—reinforced her interest in creating a garden of lethal plants.“I thought, ‘This is a way to interest children,'” she says. “Children don’t care that aspirin comes from a bark of a tree. What’s really interesting is to know how a plant kills you, and how the patient dies, and what you feel like before you die.”[…]“What’s extraordinary about the plants is that it’s the most common ones that people don’t know are killers,” the duchess says. Visitors are often surprised to learn that the laurel hedge, nearly ubiquitous in English gardens, can be highly toxic. But some visitors have had experience with laurel’s sinister side—the duchess has heard a few talk about how, after loading up their cars with pruned laurel leaves to take to the dump, drivers have fallen asleep behind the wheel of their car from the toxic fumes the branches emit.In the meme, plants in the nightshade family (which also contains potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplant) were mentioned. In the article, a more specific explanation appeared alongside a detail about the garden’s other interesting inhabitants:As part of the Poison Garden’s educational mission, the duchess grows a variety of drugs, from cannabis to cocaine (derived from the leaves of the coca plant), which she and garden guides use as a jumping-off point for drug education. “It’s a way of educating children without having them realize they’re being educated,” she says.Other poisonous plants might be less well-known to visitors, but are no less potent. One of the duchess’s favorite plants is Brugmansia, or angel’s trumpet, a member of the Solanaceae family (which includes deadly nightshade) that grows in the wild in South America. “It’s an amazing aphrodisiac before it kills you,” she says, explaining that Victorian ladies would often keep a flower from the plant on their card tables and add small amounts of its pollen to their tea to incite an LSD-like trip. “[Angel’s trumpet] is an amazing way to die because it’s quite pain-free,” the duchess says. “A great killer is usually an incredible aphrodisiac.”As such, the “Poison Garden” meme was both popular and largely accurate. The Poison Garden is a sub-attraction as part of the larger Alnwick Garden, and it is grown behind the depicted, imposing iron gates. Among the deadly plants in it are hemlock, Nux vomica (strychnine), and Ricinus communis (ricin).Comments

SOLUTION: There's a garden in England dedicated entirely to plants that are deadly and can kill you. It's the most dangerous garden in the world. It holds over 100 killers [such as hemlock], strychnine, and nightshade.

PROBLEM: The decision by Dewayne Johnson, who sued Monsanto in 2016, brings the total award to $78 million, down from the jury’s verdict on Aug. 10 of $289 million - $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages. Johnson’s law firm said in a statement that he accepted the reduction “to hopefully achieve a final resolution within his lifetime.”   Judge Suzanne Bolanos of San Francisco’s Superior Court of California, who oversaw the trial, earlier this month affirmed the liability portion of the verdict, but ordered punitive damages to be slashed to concur with California and federal law. Bayer denies allegations that glyphosate can cause cancer and said it will appeal the decision as the verdict was not supported by the evidence presented at trial. The verdict, which marked the first such decision against Monsanto, wiped 10 percent off the value of the company and shares have since dropped nearly 30 percent from their pre-verdict value. The company, which faces more than 8,700 U.S. lawsuits over glyphosate, says decades of scientific studies and real-world use have shown glyphosate to be safe for human use. Regulators around the world, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have found glyphosate was not a likely carcinogen to humans and approved the chemical, but the cancer unit of the World Health Organization in 2015 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”  The jury found the company’s glyphosate-containing RoundUp and Ranger Pro products responsible for causing Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and said the company had failed to warn him and other consumers of the risks. Johnson could decide whether to accept the reduction or face a new trial on the punitive damages portion. His lawyers on Wednesday said they would challenge the amount of damages during Bayer’s appeal.

SOLUTION: Groundskeeper in Bayer in U.S. weed-killer case accepts reduced award.

PROBLEM: Currently the drug, Vascepa, is approved for a relatively narrow group of patients with extremely high levels of triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood linked to heart disease. Irish drugmaker Amarin is seeking approval for a much larger group of patients who have lower fat levels but are still at risk of heart problems, despite taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs like Lipitor and Zocor. The panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously supported the expansion based on recent study results showing the drug can cut rates of life-threatening heart problems in high-risk patients. “There is no doubt this drug could benefit a substantial portion of the U.S. population and meet an unmet need,” said Dr. Jack Yanovski, a panelist and hormone specialist from the federal National Institutes of Health. The FDA is not required to follow the group’s advice and is expected to make its decision by the end of the year. Financial analysts predict that broader use could translate into billions in sales for Amarin. Vascepa costs around $300 a month. Some panelists urged the FDA to tailor the drug’s label to patients who are most likely to benefit. “I do not want to see this become what I call cardio candy,” said Philip Posner, a patient representative on the panel. FDA-written drug labels guide physician prescribing and often determine which uses are paid for by insurers. Panelists based their decision on a company-funded study showing that Vascepa cut the risk of heart attack, clogged arteries and other cardiovascular problems by about 25%, compared with a dummy treatment. Patients in the study were randomly assigned to take Vascepa or mineral oil capsules as a comparison. Patients in the trial had high triglycerides and other risk factors for heart problems, such as diabetes. The results, published last year, came as a surprise because a string of past studies of fish oil failed to show a positive impact on heart health. The panel noted several potential side effects of the drug, including irregular heartbeats and internal bleeding. But they agreed the drug’s benefits outweighed those risks, which could be monitored and managed by physicians. Millions of Americans take over-the-counter fish oil supplements for their presumed health benefits. These oils, also called omega-3 fatty acids, are known to reduce triglycerides. But several pharmaceutical trials have tried and failed to show that lowering those fats translates into meaningful benefits for patients. If approved, Vascepa would be the first fat-lowering drug endorsed by the FDA to reduce heart problems. Amarin has long tried to differentiate its drug from non-prescription fish oil supplements. Company advertising states that it can take 10 to 40 over-the-counter capsules to equal the daily dose of Vascepa. The drug is taken in four 1-gram capsules per day. Wall Street analysts have high expectations for broader use of the drug, with some projecting annual sales of $3 billion or higher. That compares to total company sales of just $228.4 million in 2018, according to Amarin’s financial reports. Vascepa, first approved in 2012, is Amarin’s only product on the U.S. market. ___ Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SOLUTION:
US panel backs wider use of fish oil to prevent heart attack.