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.

Input: Consider Input: The alert urged Americans to seek medical help in the event they suffered any “unusual, unexplained physical symptoms or events, auditory or sensory phenomena, or other health concerns.” The alert comes as a U.S. medical team is screening more Americans who work at the Guangzhou consulate. A previous case in Guangzhou, disclosed last month, prompted the tests. The incidents have raised fears the unexplained issues that started in Cuba in 2016 have expanded to other countries. China says it has uncovered no information that could point to a cause. The most recent evacuations followed medical testing that revealed they might have been affected. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said “a number of individuals” had been brought to the U.S. but didn’t say how many were affected or evacuated. Friday’s alert called for people to be attentive of symptoms including “dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, fatigue, cognitive issues, visual problems, ear complaints and hearing loss, and difficulty sleeping.” It urged them “not to attempt to locate the source of any unidentified auditory sensation. Instead, move to a different location.” The U.S. government has deemed the Cuba incidents “specific attacks” on American workers but hasn’t publicly identified a cause or culprit. Most of the incidents were accompanied by bizarre, unexplained sounds that initially led U.S. investigators to suspect a sonic attack. Asked about the latest incidents, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Thursday that the U.S. had not formally raised the matter with Beijing. “If the U.S. makes formal contact with us, China will continue necessary investigations in an earnest and responsible manner and maintain close communication and cooperation with the U.S.,” Hua said at a regularly scheduled news conference. China earlier said it had looked into the case announced last month but came up with no clues about the cause of the symptoms. A U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the situation publicly and requested anonymity, said the evacuated American government workers were being brought from China for testing to the University of Pennsylvania. That’s where doctors have been treating and studying patients previously evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The preliminary findings of the medical reports on the 24 personnel affected in Cuba showed they had sensory and memory problems similar to the brain dysfunction seen with concussions. The Penn team said the patients from Cuba experienced persistent disability though rehabilitation therapy customized for them seemed to help. Canada in April also ordered families of diplomatic staff in Cuba to return home after mysterious health symptoms were detected in 10 Canadians stationed on the island. Canada said the 10 continued to show unexplained brain symptoms and that “medical information raised concerns for a new type of a possible acquired brain injury.” In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month about the first case in China, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China had “said all the right things and have demonstrated their willingness to help us identify the vector which led to this medical incident.” The China incidents affect one of the most important of the seven U.S. diplomatic outposts in the country. The Guangzhou consulate opened months after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Washington in 1979 and moved to its new purpose-built facility in 2013. It serves four southern provinces with a combined population of more than 204 million and processes more than 1 million visa applications of all types annually. It is also the only U.S. diplomatic installation in China authorized to process immigrant visas and handle adoptions. People working in The Canton Place complex, a few kilometers (miles) from the consulate, said Thursday they were just hearing about the incidents, reflecting a lack of coverage in China’s entirely state-controlled media. Aled Williams, a British teacher at a kindergarten said Thursday that the reports sounded “sci-fi-ish.” “Hard to get my head around how it works,” he said. “Better watch myself.” Linda Chen, who runs a coffee shop in the area, said she was mystified as to why only certain people seemed to have been affected in an area known for its comfort and safety. “For me I feel it’s very strange. But I don’t feel that there’s something to be very afraid of because it’s probably a very special case,” Chen said. ___ Associated Press writer Josh Lederman in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.

Output: US Embassy in China sends new alert for mystery health issue.


Input: Consider Input: The release does not mention cost. The FDA evaluates drugs without consideration of cost, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t comment on it — and that’s why we’re rating this Not Applicable. But let’s be real here: The value of a new drug is a function not just of how well it works, but its cost-effectiveness. So we look forward to the day when any news release about a new drug — even one from the FDA — will include some mention of cost in its message. This release gives the preliminary results from a single study of 310 patients. Because the drug is experimental, long-term results haven’t been studied. Of the 310 patients enrolled in the lone trial upon which the approval is based, 14.8 percent showed some shrinkage of tumors during the assessment period lasting from 2.1 to about 13.8 months. For a subset of patients who were classified as having a positive response to PD-L1 expression, the response was 26 percent. As noted above, tumor shrinkage doesn’t always lead to improvements in survival or quality of life. It is a surrogate endpoint — a substitute — for the main outcome which is survival. Although this drug looks promising, to be fully transparent about its benefits as currently known, the release should have explained this. As noted in the “Summary,” another larger study is underway to assess the drug’s impact on extending life and improving quality of life. The release includes a description of side effects of this treatment. The most common ones included fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea, urinary tract infection, fever (pyrexia) and constipation. The release also mentions that patients taking the drug have an increased risk of infection and serious side effects that are “immune-mediated.” We would have liked a bit more context on what this term means for patients. The release outlines that this is the very first clinical trial of this compound for safety and efficacy, and under which regulatory paths the drug was assessed, including “breakthrough therapy designation, priority review status and accelerated approval.” We’re giving this release the benefit of the doubt and rating it Satisfactory for its bare bones description of the trial (and since we already addressed the lack of long-term survival data in the “Benefits” section.) As it stands, the results from the small trial were preliminary and short-term and did not reflect long-term survival. We would have liked to see a reference or link to the completed trial where one could look at the results to assess independently or learn more about the outcomes. We think the release should have provided more data on the patient demographics, the treatment regimen (dosing amount and schedule) as well as the range in tumor reduction. There is no disease mongering. This release describes the approval of a new drug by a regulatory agency, but we’d still like to know who sponsored the study that’s the basis for the approval. It’s not enough to state who markets the drug. The release does not give us very much information about alternatives. These patients had already received other therapy and their cancer had recurred, so it is implied that they had no other alternatives. But this isn’t stated very clearly. We can assume (and it seems evident) that the platinum-based therapy that the patients didn’t respond to initially is the usual treatment. The FDA’s approval of a drug clears the way for the drug sponsor to scale up production and begin marketing and selling the product. (The FDA doesn’t state this explicitly but it can be inferred.) A NYT article said the drug would be available in about two months. The release clearly states this product is first of its kind for this type of cancer. We found no unjustifiable language.

Output: FDA approves new, targeted treatment for bladder cancer


Input: Consider Input: It’s a marvel of ecology as shorebirds migrating from South America to the Arctic time a stop critical to their survival to this mass crab spawning. It’s also one of the world’s hot spots for bird flu — a bonanza for scientists seeking clues about how influenza evolves so they just might better protect people. “Eventually, we would like to be able to predict which would be the next pandemic,” said flu pioneer Robert Webster of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. These humble beaches turn into a mixing bowl for influenza between mid-May and early June, as thousands of shorebirds and gulls crowd together and swap viruses. Researchers carefully step around the nesting crabs to scoop up the evidence — potentially flu-infected bird droppings. “We have trained our eyes for this, that’s for sure,” said St. Jude researcher Pamela McKenzie as she bent over damp sand last month in search of the freshest samples to go on ice for later testing. Not just any splat will do. Too dry, and tests might not be able to detect virus. Too big, and it’s likely not from the species that carries the most flu here, the calico-patterned ruddy turnstone. Why test birds? “That’s where all flu viruses come from,” said Richard Webby, who directs St. Jude’s Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a program funded by the National Institutes of Health. Aquatic birds, including wild ducks and migrating shorebirds, are considered nature’s main reservoir for influenza. Whether it’s the typical winter misery or a pandemic, every strain that infects humans “started off somewhere along the family tree in the aquatic bird reservoirs,” Webby said. Usually wild birds don’t get sick, simply trading flu viruses they carry in the gut. But every so often strains from wild birds kill domesticated chickens and turkeys, and threaten pigs or even people, too. St. Jude’s annual study at Delaware Bay offers a glimpse into little-known efforts around the world — including testing migrating ducks in China and Canada, and live poultry markets in Bangladesh — to track how bird flu circulates and changes, information that can help determine what vaccines to make for animals and people. And nowhere else in the world have scientists found so many shorebirds carrying diverse flu strains as when red knots, ruddy turnstones and other species make their migratory stopover at this bay nestled between New Jersey and Delaware. Most bird flu isn’t easily spread to people, stressed McKenzie, who doesn’t even wear gloves as she pooper-scoops along a beach before the tide washes back. Still, “it’s amazing how the virus can change so rapidly, what genes they inherit,” added McKenzie, who oversees St. Jude’s global bird flu surveillance. The U.S. stockpiles just-in-case vaccines against worrisome strains. “It only has to happen once,” Webby said. “The right virus comes and gets into the right population which happens to fly over the right farm of turkeys which happens at the right time of year where the right farmer picks up the wrong bird — and we’re in trouble.” _____ Webster, now an emeritus virologist at St. Jude, made the connection between bird and human flu decades ago when he found some seabirds in Australia carrying antibodies against the strain that caused the 1957 pandemic. In 1985, his continuing hunt for bird flu took him to Delaware Bay. Today, scientists know that if two different types of flu infect a single animal at the same time — say a pig catches both a chicken strain and a human strain — the genes can shuffle to produce a totally new virus. But worry about bird flu as a threat to both poultry farms and humans has grown since a strain named H5N1 spread directly to people in the late 1990s in Hong Kong’s crowded live-poultry markets. Cousins of that virus have cropped up, as has another flu named H7N9 that since 2013 has infected more than 1,500 people in China through close contact with infected chickens. Those are very different viruses than what St. Jude finds in shorebirds passing through Delaware Bay, Webby said. For some reason, viruses carried by Asian and European birds rarely make it to the Americas, he said, but it’s important to look — and to understand the normal ebb and flow of different strains so it’s more obvious when something new crops up. The research is “one way to stay a little bit ahead of the virus,” said Marciela DeGrace of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Understanding how this virus can change and how much it can change in a quick amount of time is going to be critical for us to make countermeasures like vaccines.” _____ Why flu erupts during the Delaware Bay stopover remains a mystery. But the longest travelers arrive wasted, and must double their weight in two weeks. “You can hold a bird and say, ‘This bird just got here.’ They’re here to do work,” said Alinde Fojtik of the University of Georgia’s Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, a longtime flu researcher who this year volunteered her vacation to help count and tag shorebirds. So the birds can feast uninterrupted, only scientists and conservation workers are allowed on their preferred beaches, carefully catching and counting them, testing their overall health and tagging them for tracking as the migration continues. For the flu hunters, finding the right spot is a trick. St. Jude researcher Patrick Seiler pulls out binoculars: Nope, mostly gulls on one beach. Down the road, he spots a better target, a crowd of ruddy turnstones with their distinctive black, white and brown plumage. The skittish birds take flight as the team approaches. Each dropping gets whisked up on a cotton swab, put into a small vial of preservative and stored in a cooler. The team carried more than 600 samples back to St. Jude’s labs in Memphis, Tennessee, where researchers are beginning the monthslong process to test how many droppings harbor flu and what kind. The viral library is used for further experiments to test how well strains spread, said NIH’s DeGrace. “I would love to be able to look at the sequence of virus we find in Delaware Bay this year say, ‘Uh-oh, that’s the guy that’s coming.’ We’re not at that point yet,” Webby cautioned. “That’s our end goal, to be able to say, ‘Uh-oh, here’s something we have to worry about.’” __ The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


Output: Bird flu hot spot: Scientists track virus in huge migration.