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: Since 2011, Pugh received $500,000 selling her illustrated books to the University of Maryland Medical System, a $4 billion hospital network that’s one of the largest private employers in the state. Since the arrangement was exposed by The Baltimore Sun earlier this month, she’s stepped down from the volunteer board and returned her most recent payment of $100,000 for the hard-to-find books. She also defended her actions and portrayed press inquiries as a “witch hunt.” A Democrat who became mayor in 2016 and represented some of Baltimore’s poorest areas in the state’s Senate before that, Pugh is the public face of the still-unfolding debacle. But the Baltimore mayor — who served on the UMMS board since 2001 and once sat on a state Senate committee that funded the major health network — is hardly the only influential Marylander connected to the board or the medical system facing questions. One-third of the UMMS board members received compensation through the medical system’s arrangements with their businesses, a revelation that Gov. Larry Hogan has called “appalling.” Two other members of the board also resigned, and four others went on voluntary leave while the system reviews governance practices. The president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical System has recently been sent on a temporary leave of absence. Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot said Tuesday that an independent audit is urgent to understand how many “self-dealing” arrangements there have been over the years. In Pugh’s case, there needs to be a thorough examination of whether a product was actually delivered, he said. “I describe it as juvenile, this arrangement where she was providing or not providing books — no receipts, no contracts, no procurement. It was simply a $500,000 gift to her from the University of Maryland Medical System,” Franchot asserted in a phone interview. The slim “Healthy Holly” books, sharing tips on nutrition and exercise, were meant to be distributed to schools and daycares. However, the Sun has reported that 50,000 copies are unaccounted for, leading to widespread speculation that a good chunk were never printed in the first place. In recent days, fewer than 9,000 copies were tracked down collecting dust in a warehouse of Baltimore’s school district, which has described Pugh’s children’s books as “unsolicited” donations. The city library system, daycare programs and booksellers can’t find copies. “Healthy Holly: Exercising is Fun” is unavailable on Amazon, where the only reviews for the book are entries of people savaging Pugh’s ties with UMMS. In a written statement, Pugh has defended her lucrative book deal with UMMS, saying it started as a passion project. “I recall passing the time by thumbing through the first book before an UMMS meeting. One my colleagues loved it and thought it would help advance children’s health,” she said in a recent statement. Pugh has since cancelled all public appearances and her spokespeople say she was hospitalized over the weekend with pneumonia. They say she will address the matter more once her health improves. Criticism of UMMS and of Pugh — who faces a 2020 Democratic primary for re-election in a city dominated by a single party’s political machine — has been intense. The Washington Post’s editorial board asserted the UMMS had a “get-rich-quick program” for many of its board members, with Pugh’s involvement painted as an egregious case of “political sleaze.” Meanwhile, UMMS and Pugh have not provided clarity on the whereabouts of the 100,000 copies of the “Healthy Holly” series books or definitive proof they were published and distributed. A spokeswoman for the university-based health network says their communications team was “working hard on all of the inquiries.” The medical system had classified the “Healthy Holly” purchases as grants in federal filings. Some critics say the various statements made by Pugh and others regarding the arrangements with UMMS board members are absurd on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. “Whatever Pugh does, she is going to be operating under a very, very big cloud for a long time,” said Donald Norris, professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. “This is an unethical lapse of humongous proportions — $500,000 worth.” ___ Follow McFadden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dmcfadd

SOLUTION: Baltimore mayor’s $500K book deal draws intense criticism.

PROBLEM: The department revealed it had contemplated using the drug in a court filing last month, which has not been previously reported. In the end, it decided against adopting the drug for executions. Attorney General William Barr announced in July his department instead would use pentobarbital, a barbiturate, when it resumes federal executions later this year, ending a de facto moratorium on the punishment put in place by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. But the special consideration given to the possibilities of fentanyl, even as federal agents were focused on seizing illegal imports of the synthetic opioid, show how much has changed since the federal government last carried out an execution nearly 20 years ago. Many pharmaceutical companies have since put tight controls on their distribution channels to stop their drugs being used in executions. As old supply chains vanished, many states, and the federal government in turn, have been forced to tinker with their lethal recipes. They have experimented with different drugs, in some cases leading to grisly “botched” executions in which the condemned prisoners have visibly suffered prolonged, excruciating deaths, viewed by some as a breach of the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments. In 2017, Nebraska and Nevada announced they would use fentanyl, which is 100 times more powerful than morphine, in new multi-drug execution protocols. By 2018, the U.S. Justice Department was also examining the “use of fentanyl as part of a lethal injection protocol,” according to a three-page internal memorandum from March 2018 by the director of the department’s Bureau of Prisons. The Justice Department revealed the memo’s existence in an August court filing after a federal judge ordered it to produce a complete “administrative record” showing how it arrived at the new pentobarbital execution protocol announced in July. The full contents of the memo are not public. It is not known why the department decided to examine fentanyl, what supply channels were considered or why it ultimately rejected fentanyl as a protocol. The government’s court filing shows the only other named drug examined as the subject of a department memo was pentobarbital, the drug it now says it wants to use in December and January to kill five of the 61 prisoners awaiting execution on federal death row. Wyn Hornbuckle, a department spokesman, declined to share a copy of the memo or to answer questions about the government’s execution protocol. Mark Inch, who was the Bureau of Prisons’ director at the time, acknowledged in a brief telephone interview writing the memo. Inch, who abruptly resigned a couple months after writing the memo, declined to answer questions, in part because he said it would be in conflict with his current role running Florida’s Department of Corrections. Doctors can prescribe fentanyl for treating severe pain. In recent years, illegal fentanyl has become a common additive in bootleg pain pills and other street drugs, contributing to the tens of thousands of opioid overdose deaths in the country each year. Even tiny quantities can slow or stop a person’s breathing. Earlier this year, an Ohio lawmaker proposed using some of the illegal fentanyl seized from drug traffickers to execute condemned inmates. Death penalty researchers say that just because a drug is deadly does not mean it is always appropriate as an execution drug. “I don’t think it’d be a surprise that the government would be looking at alternative methods of carrying out lethal injection, and fentanyl has been in the news,” Robert Dunham, the director of the Washington-based non-profit group the Death Penalty Information Center, said in an interview. “But there is just something fundamentally wrong about using a drug implicated in illegal activities as your method of executing prisoners.”   In August 2018, Carey Dean Moore became the first person in the United States to be executed using a protocol that included fentanyl. Nebraska prison officials injected him with fentanyl and three other drugs. Moore took 23 minutes to die. Witnesses said that before succumbing, Moore breathed heavily and coughed and that his face turned red, then purple.

SOLUTION: Exclusive: While battling opioid crisis, U.S. government weighed using fentanyl for executions.

PROBLEM: People with high genetic risk and poor health habits were about three times more likely to develop dementia versus those with low genetic risk and good habits, researchers reported Sunday. Regardless of how much genetic risk someone had, a good diet, adequate exercise, limiting alcohol and not smoking made dementia less likely. “I consider that good news,” said John Haaga of the U.S. National Institute on Aging, one of the study’s many sponsors. “No one can guarantee you’ll escape this awful disease” but you can tip the odds in your favor with clean living, he said. Results were discussed at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Los Angeles and published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association. About 50 million people have dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type. Genes and lifestyle contribute to many diseases, but researchers only recently have had the tools and information to do large studies to see how much each factor matters. One such study a few years ago found that healthy living could help overcome genetic risk for heart disease. Now researchers have shown the same to be true for dementia. Dr. Elzbieta Kuzma and colleagues at the University of Exeter Medical School in England used the UK Biobank to study nearly 200,000 people 60 or older with no signs or symptoms of dementia at the start. Their genetic risk was classified as high, medium or low based on dozens of mutations known to affect dementia. They also were grouped by lifestyle factors. After about eight years of study, 1.8% of those with high genetic risk and poor lifestyles had developed dementia versus 0.6% of folks with low genetic risk and healthy habits. Among those with the highest genetic risk, just over 1% of those with favorable lifestyles developed dementia compared to nearly 2% of those with poor lifestyles. One limitation: Researchers only had information on mutations affecting people of European ancestry, so it’s not known whether the same is true for other racial or ethnic groups. The results should give encouragement to people who fear that gene mutations alone determine their destiny, said Dr. Rudy Tanzi, a genetics expert at Massachusetts General Hospital. Less than 5% of the ones tied to Alzheimer’s are “fully penetrant,” meaning that they guarantee you’ll get the disease, he said. “That means that with 95% of the mutations, your lifestyle will make a difference,” Tanzi said. “Don’t be too worried about your genetics. Spend more time being mindful of living a healthy life.” One previous study in Sweden and Finland rigorously tested the effect of a healthy lifestyle by assigning one group to follow one and included a comparison group that did not. It concluded that healthy habits could help prevent mental decline. The Alzheimer’s Association is sponsoring a similar study underway now in the United States. Healthy living also is the focus of new dementia prevention guidelines that the World Health Organization released in February. ___ Marilynn Marchione can be followed at: @MMarchioneAP ___ 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:
A healthy lifestyle may offset genetic risk for Alzheimer’s.