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: P&G, with roughly $68 billion in annual revenue, said it has invested millions in creating and testing refills for detergents over the years and is now trying to push in to mainstream beauty and body care refills which are virtually unheard of. It recently began offering some Olay face-cream jars with refill pouches on Olay.com, telling Reuters it has plans to expand the sales of the pouches in Europe early next year. "We're learning on our legs so I don't know that we're in a position to say, 'Hey, here's the magic to selling refills,'" P&G spokesman Damon Jones said. Beauty products retailer The Body Shop, owned by Brazil's Natura Cosmeticos SA NATU3.SA, says it plans to roll out "refill stations" in its stores globally next year, allowing shoppers to buy reusable metal containers to fill with Body Shop shower gels or creams. The company had offered refills at its stores in the early 1990s, but discontinued them in 2003, citing a lack of consumer demand. Unilever, which has set targets for reducing and recycling plastic by 2025, in October announced the planned launch of "refill sticks" of deodorants under its Dove line of personal care products on Loopstore.com. The website, operated by recycling company TerraCycle, offers consumers the chance to buy some household products in ultra-durable packaging with refills delivered to their doors, milkman-style. Across the consumer goods industry, results for refillable products have been mixed so far as many shoppers are far too set in their ways to be easily weaned from living in a throwaway culture. While refills are less expensive to purchase - generally priced at 20% to 30% less per item than the containers they are aimed to replenish, according to Unilever - shoppers have so far, for the most part, failed to snap them up, the companies said. SC Johnson & Son Inc, marketer of Windex and Pledge, said refills and concentrates so far have not played well with either Americans or Europeans over the decade they have been offered, with unit sales of such products pretty much flat. It pulled concentrated refills for Shout stain remover off the shelves because they were not selling very well. In 2010, Unilever put 20-liter tanks to dispense detergents in Walmart Inc's (WMT.N) British supermarket chain Asda, and provided flexible pouches for customers to refill. But with leaky machines, safety and maintenance problems and the high costs of upkeep, Unilever said the tests fell short of expectations. Asda was also unhappy because the tanks occupied a lot of space. "None of them sell very well it is a convenience issue," SC Johnson CEO Fisk Johnson told Reuters. Johnson said some people find it painstaking to wash and refill bottles themselves while others worry that smaller bottles filled with concentrates are less "bang-for-your-buck" than the larger ones they have used for years. Still, the privately held company said it was expanding its refill offerings this year to address concerns surrounding plastic waste and is also testing refill stations for cleaning products with UK retailer Waitrose, owned by Britain's John Lewis [JLPLC.UL]. The Waitrose tests are showing the first signs of progress in refill sales, Johnson said, and the company is now thinking of expanding the project. Even if consumers are comfortable using refills for some household goods, it is more complicated to sell them for products like Pantene shampoo and Olay creams, P&G spokesman Jones said. For instance, with beauty products, the look and feel of packaging is a big factor in creating and maintaining customer loyalty, while delivering an environmental benefit, he said. Some shoppers say they want to buy refillable products, but that the offerings are not available at many stores. Earlier this year, dozens of consumers took to social media to urge The Body Shop to bring back its refill counters. "Refill, refill, refill!" Twitter user @JaiChipperfield said on July 22, joining a thread in which several other shoppers demanded the return of refills. "Seems to me that judging by these comments your customers want to see the return of refills," @JaiChipperfield added. "Me too, it would be brilliant to see that return." The Body Shop eventually responded to those pleas. "Now with the renewed focus on sustainability, we believe it is the right time to return with it," Body Shop spokeswoman Lucy Muircroft told Reuters this week.

SOLUTION: Procter & Gamble, rivals take refills into beauty aisle.

PROBLEM: In his private practice, Ian Paterson lied to exaggerate risks that patients would develop breast cancer, performing needless surgery and in some cases mastectomies for which patients paid, judge Jeremy Baker said. "The physical, and particularly, psychological effect upon each of them, has been profound," the judge told Nottingham Crown Court. The trial had heard that patients trusted the doctor who was charming and reassuring, but were later left feeling violated and vulnerable, with some having suffered prolonged psychological distress. The 59-year-old surgeon's motives were not clear, the judge said, but he had shown a "complete lack of remorse" during the trial. "I have no doubt that in pursuit of your own self-aggrandizement and the material rewards which it brought from your private practice, you lost sight of the fact that you were carrying out significant surgical procedures," Baker said. "Without any regard for the long-term effects which it had on them, you deliberately played upon their worst fears," he said. Speaking after the sentencing, Patricia Welch, one of Paterson's victims, said she felt justice had been done but called for an inquiry so that patients had full protection when seeking private medical care. "We will never know the real reason he has acted in such an evil way," she told reporters outside the court. "It will never go away because you just see it in the mirror every morning."

SOLUTION: UK doctor jailed for 15 years over unnecessary breast surgery.

PROBLEM: The story includes one expert's estimate of the cost of treating brain and spinal cord defects, but it does not discuss those costs may be affected by folic acid fortification or how the cost of fortification affects food prices. Though individuals don't face a huge cost, the aggregate cost of fortification is substantial. The story could have mentioned this at least briefly. The story highlights the decline in birth defects that is attributed to folic acid supplementation. However, it does not include a source for the statement that "fortification with the vitamin prevents an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 brain and spinal cord defects in both countries." By contrast, a CDC web page on folic acid supplementation states that each year in the U.S. "[a]n estimated 1,000 more babies are born healthy since fortification." http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/data.html The story performs a service by bringing attention to the complex and difficult balancing of benefits and harms that comes with decisions about adding supplements to food. As mentioned above, the overall thrust of the story adequately captures the basic point that researchers are struggling to determine whether, what, and for whom folic acid supplementation may present potential harm. However, in some cases the comments of Dr. Mason portray a much stronger association between folic acid supplementation and cancer risk than even his own journal publications put forward. By intertwining the researcher's personal statements with references to published trials and reviews, the story blurs the distinction between speculation and evidence. The story makes clear the complexity of and uncertainty surrounding possible associations between folic acid supplementation and cancer. However, the story exaggerates what is known about potential cancer risk by highlighting comments supporting a potential link with folic acid supplementation, while failing to provide context or contrary information. The story includes an estimate by Dr. Joel Mason that "excess folic acid consumption may cause an extra 15,000 cases of colorectal cancer each year in the U.S. and Canada." But the story fails to define excess consumption, nor does it note that the are more than 160,000 new cases of colorectal cancer reported in the U.S. and Canada each year. And while the researcher may have told the reporter that he believes supplementation may be boosting cancer rates, a journal article Mason recently co-authored states that "Future studies need to explore whether a causal relationship exists between supraphysiological levels of folate intake and colorectal carcinogenesis." Also, while the story states that "researchers noticed that rates of colorectal cancer went up in North America around the same time that fortification began," the reporter should have explained the apparent discrepancy with CDC statements that between 1998 (when mandatory folic acid supplementation began in the U.S.) and 2005 both colorectal cancer incidence and deaths declined. References: Mason article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19057184 Cancer stats: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/colorectal/statistics/trends.htm http://www.cancer.ca/Canada-wide/About%20cancer/Cancer%20statistics/Canadian%20Cancer%20Statistics.aspx A story of this length on a subject that is hotly debated among nutrition researchers should include comments from more than one nutrition researcher. The story fails to note that according to a disclosure statement in one of his recent journal articles, Dr. Mason has been a paid consultant to Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, a manufacturer of multivitamins. Reference: Disclosure statement with Joel B. Mason, Aaron Dickstein, Paul F. Jacques, Paul Haggarty, Jacob Selhub, Gerard Dallal, and Irwin H. Rosenberg A Temporal Association between Folic Acid Fortification and an Increase in Colorectal Cancer Rates May Be Illuminating Important Biological Principles: A Hypothesis Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2007 16: 1325-1329. However, because the story does touch on several aspects of the debate, we will give it the benefit of the doubt on this criterion even though we wish other sources had been named or that other nutrition experts had been quoted. The story points out the foods that are fortified with folic acid. However, there is no advice about how individuals could estimate their daily intake of folic acid or alter it, if they desired. The story points out that folic acid supplementation of flour has been required in the U.S. since 1998. It would have been helpful to also discuss whether and how consumers could reduce their intake of folic acid, if desired. Questions about potential harms of folic acid supplementation are indeed a hot topic in nutrition research. However, most of the studies and other reports mentioned in this story were published more than two years ago, so the debate is not as new as the story implies. Given the different aspects of the debate reflected in the story, we think it's safe to assume this didn't rely solely or largely on a news release although we wonder why it relied so heavily on one nutrition expert's perspectives.

SOLUTION:
Folic acid might be losing its sheen