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.

Q: But one theory about the epic undertaking reserves a special place for a nearby river, now known as the Frome, that may have served as a conduit for ferrying some of the smaller megaliths toward the site on rafts. Today, the placid waterway is once again playing a supporting role in a grand vision, albeit one its architects want to etch in the statute books, not in stone. Frome, a market town in the county of Somerset, is petitioning the British government to grant the River Frome “legal personhood” – in effect, giving it human rights. In throwing down this gauntlet, the town has joined a global “rights of nature” movement linking river basins in New Zealand to rainforests in South America and towns in the U.S. Midwest. In each case, communities are reimagining ways to harness the law to defend the Earth’s living tissues, and the places they call home. Some have dubbed it Mother Earth’s MeToo moment. In practical terms, supporters hope that granting the Frome rights will give lawyers a new avenue to seek redress whenever its waters are sullied by runoff from pig and dairy farms or overflowing sewers. Last month, one of the River Frome’s tributaries turned an unnatural shade of neon blue – highlighting wider concerns over water quality in British rivers. But Peter Macfadyen, an undertaker who redrew Frome’s political map by leading a band of independent candidates to take over the town council, wants to do more than protect one river. In an era of accelerating climate change, Macfadyen and his allies see their quest as part of a struggle to reset the balance between nature and the modern world. “This is much bigger than just wanting to punish people for doing something wrong,” said Macfadyen, who also served as Frome’s mayor. “It’s about trying to change a mindset about the environment in which we live.”   Supporters of the nature’s rights movement see Frome as the first test case for the concept in Europe. Nevertheless, the town has been waiting for months for the government to respond. And just as critics have questioned the effectiveness of campaigns in other countries, some in Frome have their doubts. Neil Howlett, a lawyer who lives by the river in Frome, says he backs many of the community-building steps taken by Macfadyen and other independent local politicians. But he sees the council’s vision for a “river’s rights” bylaw as a distraction. “Having a law which is completely outside the cultural basis of the society in which you pass the law doesn’t make for law that works,” Howlett said. “It’s lovely as an idea. But it’s only lovely as an idea.”   “PROGRAMMED FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION”   Although indigenous peoples have long shared the intuition that rivers, mountains and lakes are in some sense living, sentient beings, American legal scholar Christopher Stone framed the idea in contemporary legal terms. In his 1972 book, “Should Trees Have Standing?”, Stone argued that voiceless natural features would be best protected by granting them the kinds of legal protections and access to courts usually reserved for two-legged plaintiffs. The argument was a novel twist on the long-established principle in the United States that companies can enjoy “legal personality” to distinguish their legal obligations from those of their directors and shareholders. The idea is starting to spread. Campaigners won what is hailed as the first “rights of nature” courtroom victory in Ecuador in 2011 when judges stopped a road-widening project from dumping gravel in the Vilcabamba River. Around the same time, Bolivia enshrined a far-reaching vision of nature’s rights in a statute known as “The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth.”  In 2017, New Zealand’s parliament became the first legislature to acknowledge a river’s legal personhood when it passed a bill recognising the rights of the Whanganui River as an “indivisible and living whole.”  That same year, a high court in India declared the Ganga and Yamuna rivers legal entities – along with two Himalayan glaciers and their meadows, waterfalls and forests. Colombia’s constitutional court made a similar move for the Atrato River basin, where riparian communities face illegal gold mining and paramilitary violence. This summer, Bangladesh recognised the rights of all its rivers. Although legal systems in many developing countries were implanted during colonial times, nature’s rights campaigns in Europe and North America represents a role reversal in which “eco-cratic” indigenous worldviews are enjoying a revival. Advocates see this new “Earth jurisprudence” as a skeleton key to unlock a shift away from the endless pursuit of economic growth, regardless of the ecological consequences. “The current system is programmed for self-destruction, and the legal system is the enabler,” said Mumta Ito, a lawyer and founder of Nature’s Rights, a Scotland-based advocacy group, which is advising Frome town council. “The only way we’ll be able to change things is by creating a new operating system with nature’s rights at its core.”  Although the quest to win legal personhood for the River Frome was started barely a year ago, the roots of the campaign stretch back to a meeting at the Griffin pub in Frome one evening in 2011. Fed up with party divisions hobbling the town council, Macfadyen and a group of like-minded collaborators resolved to stand as independents at the next elections. Nestling in a shallow bowl of hills and noted for picturesque cobbled lanes, Frome has long been a magnet for free thinkers. But in a town of almost 27,000 people, the mavericks had never attempted a takeover. Surprising even themselves, the Independents for Frome movement won 10 seats on the 17-seat council with their model of a new participatory form of decision-making. In 2015, the Independents swept all 17 seats, prompting the Frome Times to dub the town “The People’s Republic of Frome.” In elections this May, independents won almost 80% of the vote. On a recent afternoon, Macfadyen led Reuters on a tour of some council-backed projects grouped loosely along the river, whose green-brown waters curve gently through the town. Wildflowers, nettles and brambles had been deliberately allowed to run riot on its steep, shaded banks. Near the bridge in the town centre, Frome’s “share shop” allows people to rent items such as power tools, musical instruments or camping gear at low rates. Nearby, a community fridge means nobody’s excess fresh vegetables need go to waste. The town council also backed a new renewable energy cooperative, which raised £300,000 from locals to put solar panels on buildings such as the health centre and football club. Macfadyen laid out step-by step instructions for running a town council in his book “Flatpack Democracy” – a play on the idea that thriving localism could be replicated at scale like  self-assembly furniture. Inspired by Frome’s example, independents have taken over more than 20 other town councils and have strong representation on another 20, Macfadyen says. Jamie Kelsey Fry, a contributing editor at the New Internationalist magazine, co-founded a similar initiative in the neighbouring county of Devon. He sees the campaigns as part of a “new municipalism” movement reshaping politics in cities as diverse as Barcelona in Spain, Jackson in Mississippi and Valparaiso in Chile – their organisers often driven at least in part by concerns over climate change. “These groups are going to become exceptionally valuable, because as society functioning in its normal, business-as-usual way begins to collapse, we’re going to have to be in a position to look after ourselves,” Kelsey Fry said. Although the rights of nature movement is growing fast, turning its aspirations into effective restraints on commercial interests remains a challenge. In the United States, the city of Toledo, Ohio, voted in February to amend its charter to state that the giant Lake Erie, plagued by toxic algae blooms, had a right to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” This summer, state lawmakers quashed the move, saying nature did not have appropriate standing. In the case of Frome, legal practitioners would be astonished if the government approves the town’s draft bylaw, partly because there are already laws protecting the river. For example, in 2017, a court in the nearby city of Bath fined a Somerset farmer £22,000 for allowing slurry to spill into the water. The contamination had turned the River Frome brown and foul-smelling and killed at least 1,700 fish. Frome town council said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government informed it last week that a decision on its application was still pending. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. With the world’s water bodies facing growing pressure from the extremes of heat, drought and rainfall driven by climate change, Macfadyen argues that any initiative that helps people to look at nature with fresh eyes is worthwhile. “We’re in the situation we’re in because we’ve misunderstood our position in the ecosystem,” Macfadyen said. “And unfortunately, we were wrong. We can’t do what we like. If we pour poison over everything, it comes back to bite us.”

A: Mother Earth's MeToo moment: English town joins campaign for 'nature's rights'.
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Q: The story doesn’t mention cost at all. Since Lucentis can cost $2,000 per injection, that’s a significant oversight. It would also be useful to tell readers how Lucentis injections compare with the cost of laser treatment. The benefits are, for the most part, reasonably well explained. But those explanations lack numbers to back them up and are overstated in at least one place. “One benefit discussed in the release is that study participants who received laser treatment were more likely to suffer peripheral vision loss than participants who were treated solely with Lucentis — although this isn’t quantified. A second benefit was that participants who received laser treatment were more likely to require subsequent surgery to remove blood from the eye — and this was quantified. But the release pushes things a bit when it comes to vision, or visual acuity. The release states: “At two years, vision in the Lucentis group improved by an average of about half a line on an eye chart, compared with virtually no change in the laser group.” But here’s how the journal article puts it: “There was no statistically significant visual acuity difference between the ranibizumab and PRP [laser] groups at 2 years. The language in the journal article itself stresses that what was being evaluated was whether Lucentis was at least as good as laser treatment — and they found that, after two years, the visual acuity of patients who took Lucentis (and had no laser treatment) was as good as patients who had the laser treatment. The release could have simply stated this and avoided confusion. In short, this was a close one — but the lack of numbers on peripheral vision and the overstatement of the visual acuity results make this a “Not Satisfactory.” The release mentions that one study volunteer in the Lucentis group developed an eye infection and stated that “serious systemic adverse events,” namely cardiac arrest and stroke, occurred at similar rates among the two groups undergoing the two different procedures. We’ll rate that satisfactory for the disclosure although the release might have gone even further by mentioning the other side effects named in the study including inflammation and elevated intraocular pressure which occurred in both treatment groups. The release does a good job of describing the study design, the number of participants, and the fact that this was a randomized clinical trial. A few words about the limitations of the study — e.g. the investigators and patients could not be masked to which treatment they were getting, would have be useful as well. No disease mongering here. The release does tell readers that the study was funded by the National Eye Institute. However, it does not make clear that Lloyd Paul Aiello — who is quoted in the release — was also a co-author of the journal article. The release also fails to mention that several co-authors receive research funding or consulting fees from Genentech, which developed ranibizumab and markets it in the U.S., and Novartis, which markets the drug outside the U.S. The release does a good job of comparing Lucentis to conventional laser treatment for PDR and we’ll award a Satisfactory rating on that basis. However, we’d note that these are not necessarily the only two options. Lucentis is classed as an “anti-VEGF” (anti- vascular endothelial growth factor) drug — by blocking a protein called VEGF, the drug can reverse abnormal blood vessel growth and decrease fluid in the retina. Other drugs in this category include Avastin and Eylea. Are those drugs under consideration for trials related to PDR treatment? If so, it’s worth mentioning — particularly since Avastin costs around $60 per dose, as compared to Lucentis’s $2,000 per dose. The release notes that Lucentis is already used to treat other diabetes-related eye problems, and “should be considered a viable treatment option for people with PDR.” The clinical trial at issue here appears to be the first to look at the use of Lucentis as a treatment for PDR, particularly in a randomized study with direct comparison to laser treatment. However, the release doesn’t tell readers that. On the other hand, the release does make clear that this is the first significant advance in clinical treatment for PDR since the 1970s — that’s good context. The release does a good job of avoiding hype and explaining what was a complex study.

A: Lucentis Proves Effective Against Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy
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Q: The lawsuit brought by Terry Leavitt in Alameda Superior Court in Oakland is the first of over a dozen J&J talc cases scheduled for trial in 2019. The company is facing some 11,700 lawsuits over the safety of talc in its products. Leavitt’s lawyer, Joseph Satterley, accused J&J in his opening statement of knowingly selling a dangerous product, according to an online broadcast by Courtroom View Network. “The evidence will show that J&J knew about the asbestos risk and they continued to sell the product, giving consumers no opportunity to protect themselves,” he said. A lawyer for co-defendant Imerys Talc America, a unit of French Imerys SA (IMTP.PA), told the jury the evidence would show there is no asbestos in its talc and that Leavitt’s disease was not caused by its product. A lawyer for J&J will make his opening remarks on Tuesday. “Our talc is safe and does not contain asbestos. For decades, Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder has repeatedly been tested and been found not to contain asbestos,” the company said in response to a request for comment on Monday. J&J and Imerys have argued in court that decades of studies have shown their products to be safe and asbestos-free. Leavitt’s is the first talc case to go to trial since Reuters on Dec. 14 published a special report detailing internal J&J documents showing talc in the company’s raw and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s into the early 2000s. The report prompted a stock selloff on fears of J&J’s liability. Shares on Monday closed at $127.01, 14 percent below their Dec. 13 value. While earlier talc lawsuits alleged talc itself causes ovarian cancer, plaintiffs’ lawyers have more recently focused on arguing that asbestos contamination in talc caused mesothelioma, a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Leavitt’s case is being tried by the same team of lawyers, including Satterley, who in April 2018 won a $117 million award by a New Jersey jury for a man who blamed his mesothelioma on J&J’s cosmetic talc. That verdict is under appeal. In 11 cases so far alleging asbestos contamination in talc, three resulted in wins for plaintiffs, awarding damages as high as $4.69 billion in a July 2018 multi-plaintiff ovarian cancer verdict. J&J won three other cases and another five ended in hung juries. J&J has appealed all of the plaintiff verdicts, and the company said it is confident the verdicts would be overturned on appeal. Leavitt was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2017. She was born in the Philippines and claims she was exposed to J&J cosmetic talc that originated from South Korea mines during the first two years of her life before her parents moved back to the United States in 1968, Satterley said on Monday. He said testing of Asian talc samples from the 1960s and 1970s by his own expert would show Korean-mined talc tested positive for asbestos fibers, as has talc from U.S. sources. J&J in court filings in the Leavitt case said that fibers found in the Korean talc or any of its other cosmetic talc could not be classified as asbestos and referred to them as non-asbestos forms that its experts say are harmless. Geologically, some asbestos can occur as “non-asbestiform” rocks. Both forms often occur together and in talc deposits. The company in its Monday statement did not specifically address the allegations surrounding the South Korean mine.

A:
Latest trial in J&J talc litigations gets under way in California.
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