Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Q: Paragraph: The story devotes its second paragraph to cost, including how that cost may differ depending on whether patients have insurance. Well done. This is a really close one. The story does a lot of things well here. It notes that, in one trial, there was no difference in the benefits between Xofluza and existing flu treatment drug oseltamivir (better known as Tamiflu). However, it does not actually quantify the benefits associated with Xofluza. Instead, the story states that it "may alleviate some symptoms and shorten the time patients feel sick." We approve of the cautious language used throughout the story, but we like to see quantified benefits in instances where the information is available. In this case, an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in September reported that Xofluza reduced the "time to alleviation of symptoms" by a mean of 25-38 hours, compared to placebo (the difference depended on the age group of the patient). Ergo, a not satisfactory rating here. The story addresses this issue head on, earning it a solid satisfactory rating from us. One point that would have made it even stronger would have been to note that the company selling Xofluzawarns that pregnant women and nursing mothers may want to avoid the drug, as it is not known whether the drug may harm the fetus or if it would pass into breastmilk for nursing mothers. The story does a good job of describing the supporting evidence clearly and concisely. No disease mongering here. In fact, the story provides good context on the risks posed by influenza. The story incorporates input from two sources at the FDA, but the information appears to stem from an FDA statement. Information from pharmaceutical companies is clearly marked, but we really look for news stories to incorporate input from independent sources beyond what may be available in a news release. The story addresses the similarities (and differences) to other drugs that address flu symptoms, particularly oseltamivir (Tamiflu). The story notes that Xofluza has received FDA approval. As noted above, the drugs similarities and differences to existing pharmaceutical treatment options was laid out clearly. The news peg here was FDA's approval of the drug, which is also made clear. The work goes well beyond what you would find in any news release. We particularly applaud the story's discussion of viruses developing resistance to antiviral drugs. Claim: F.D.A. Approves New Drug for Flu

A: This story is one of two we are reviewing that focuses on FDA's approval of a drug designed to speed patient recovery from flu symptoms (the second story is from ABC News). The drug is baloxavir marboxil, marketed under the trade name Xofluza. This New York Times story hits most of the points that we want to see in a story about a new drug. The criteria that we use at HealthNewsReview.org to review health-related news stories were not developed in a vacuum. Rather, these are the criteria we feel are essential to allow patients and health care providers to make informed decisions about diagnosis and treatment options. While we do ding it on a couple things, the story does not exaggerate the findings, and provides people with the fundamental details they need to be informed patients. We were especially pleased that this story did not perpetuate misinformation that's developed around this drug that is, that it could help reduce transmission of the virus. To date, there is no evidence to show that as a benefit.
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Q: Paragraph: Yet nothing prepared residents of its oldest town, Graaff-Reinet, for their worst drought in more than a century. As the dry spell entered its fourth year, tap water turned brown and smelled like rotting fish. When the water behind the Nqweba Dam dried up, depositing tens of thousands of dead fish onto cracked earth, queues began forming at municipal bore holes and farm animals died in their hundreds. The bleak choices facing millions of people in drought-stricken southern Africa - whether to flush toilets or not, or to keep animals alive or let them die - could soon be faced by other places on a warming planet with shrinking water supplies. "This area is dry but our taps have never been completely empty. Never," said Bukelwa Booysen, who has had to send staff in search of borehole water for her school for disabled children, and send the kids home when they can't find any. An abnormally hot summer with rainfall 75% below average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has struck the whole region. The United Nations says 45 million people in southern Africa face hunger. Bushes and trees clinging to the Karoo's rocky ravines are withered and grey - even hardy acacia thorns are dying. Signs mark rivers that are now dry beds. At one farm, Gerrie Snyman, 65, was feeding grain to sheep and goats that couldn't find pasture. More than a third of his couple-thousand goats and sheep had either died or been sold this year. His 80 cows were now 15. He loaded a calf that was starving - its mother had stopped producing milk - onto his truck to take home and shoot. A friend had shot himself dead after his animals died of thirst. "We are grateful to the Almighty for our borehole water," he said. "We don't know what we'll do when it runs out." When Cape Town's reservoir nearly ran dry 18 months ago, it made international headlines and authorities rationed water. Yet Karoo is long past water rationing. For Valentia Esho, 45, an unemployed mother of seven in the township of Umazisakhe, it means letting her toilet fill up instead of flushing, never washing clothes and only washing plates that stink. Water is just for drinking. "The house is really smelling," she said, inside her one-room brick-and-tin home. "Everyone is paining from stomach aches and diarrhoea." In another township, Asherville, where wind kicked up dust devils, school headmaster Basil Vaaltyn was overseeing water distribution from a truck. He'd done everything to cut down on his usage: "I'm down to a minute showering instead of two." His wife saves dirty dishwater to fill the cistern. A spokesman for the municipality said it was drilling boreholes, installing pipelines and building an 18-million-litre reservoir, adding: "Usage of water is still very high. The community is requested to use water sparingly." With municipal authorities overwhelmed, South African charity Gift of the Givers is trucking water to townships and drilling boreholes. Gideon Groenewald, a geohydrologist for the charity, uses science and spirituality to look for groundwater. When he was growing up on a farm, he used to dowse with wet twigs. Nowadays he prefers magnetic detectors. "I open Google maps and look for the lines of trees. I ask God in prayer which lines hold water, then I go down to that GPS location," he said while a forked stick turned in his hand over an arid patch of shrubs. "You see the stick moving where the magnetic field is? There's water here," he continued. "It's pure science." The charity has drilled 1,800 boreholes in the past three years, Groenewald said, only a third of them dry. But Louise Stafford, water director for the Nature Conservancy in South Africa, urged caution with boreholes, because groundwater is a finite resource. Water-intensive agriculture like citrus farms can make droughts worse, she said, and leaky pipes are losing a billion litres a year - problems Water Minister Lindiwe Sisulu pledged to tackle in a new water masterplan she delivered on Thursday. One Sunday, as clouds formed over Graaff-Reinet, its Assembly Church prayed. The clouds spat but didn't pour. "We pray for God to open heaven and send rain," Pastor Dolan Cochrane said. The congregation bowed. "Lord," Cochrane continued. "We know that, in your time, you will come to our rescue." Claim: South Africa's Karoo drills and prays as taps run dry.

A: South Africa's Karoo region has always been parched - it means land of thirst in the language of its earliest inhabitants, the Khoisan hunter gatherers.
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Q: Paragraph: Although the story mentions the high upfront cost of proton therapy, it does not describe the cost of treatment compared to other alternatives. Thestory points out that there have been no controlled treatment trials for proton therapy inprostate cancerincreasingly the targeted useso there really are no good data on benefits. Since the technology is relatively new there are probably no good long-term survival estimates even from case series. The story mentions side effects of proton therapy, such as incontinence andsexual side effects in men with prostate cancer, and explains that they may be more common than reported in studies. The story mentions that there is a lack of randomized trials comparing proton therapy to conventional radiation. The story does not appear to engage in disease mongering. However, the article doesn't indicate that many of the 186,320 new prostate cancer cases are early-stage for which the benefit of any treatmentlet alone proton beamremains uncertain. The story quotes multiple experts who provide meaningful perspectives on the value of proton therapy. The story mentions conventional radiationand surgery as the alternatives to proton therapy. The story accurately describes the limited availability of proton therapy. The story accurately describes the novelty of proton therapy. Because the story quotes multiple experts, the reader can assume that the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information. Claim: The promise of proton-beam therapy

A:
This story reports on the hype, the promise and the controversies around proton beam therapy. The potential benefitof proton beam therapy is that it can accurately target deep-seated cancers without damaging surrounding tissues. For this reason it is an attractive idea for certain rare and serioustumors suchas tumors of the brain or eye where surgery or conventional radiation would be very destructive. However, it is increasingly being used to treat more common cancers, such as prostate and lung cancer. Moreover, proton beam therapy is extraordinarily costly because the equipment involvedrequires huge investments from hospitals. Given the current economic climate in healthcare, the acceleration of this technologyhas raised seriousquestions about its cost-effectiveness and issues around access to care, given that it is currently only available in academic medical centers. This story does a good job of describing the problem of limited availability to those patients who could truly benefit from proton therapy while at the same time it is increasingly being used in cancers for which there is questionable benefit, especially prostate cancer. The story also rightly points out the limited evidence that it is any better than conventional radiation and that the low risk of side effects may be an underestimation. The story also highlights the perverse incentives to use the therapy to treat prostate cancer so that hospitals can recover their high costs of investing in the technology. However, the story could have more explicitly compared the cost of proton beam radiation to conventional radiation to give the reader a sense of the scope of the cost difference. Overall, this was a very enlightening in-depth piece about a growing concern in health care.
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