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.

Ex Input:
Although this therapy is not yet available for patient use, the story makes a point of noting that the cost may well be “stratospheric,” should it make it to market. If approved, such treatments are expected to command stratospheric prices. For example, a separate Spark gene therapy for a rare type of childhood blindness, which is on track for Food and Drug Administration clearance soon, could cost $1 million per patient for infusions in both eyes, according to some Wall Street analysts. Still, the therapies can produce at least some offsetting savings. Porteus noted in his editorial that the hemophilia therapy resulted in savings of about $200,000 a year per patient because of the elimination of clotting-factor infusions. The story summarizes the outcome of the small, 10-person trial that dominates this narrative: Lindsey George, the lead investigator and a hematologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that nine of the 10 men in the trial didn’t experience any bleeding episodes after the gene therapy treatment. The one patient who needed clotting factor because of bleeding used 91 percent less than before, she said. Although the story does not address harms directly–and should have–it does note that one of the worrying side effects of gene therapy—spurring the body to attack itself—was not present in this study. It is clear from the story that the study is small and an “early-stage trial.” One source also notes that the researchers tracked individuals in the study for no more than a year and a half, making longer term assessments unavailable. The story could have done more, though, to signal to the reader that, despite the encouraging outcomes of the study, the treatment is still very much under development. The next stage—Phase 3 trials—requires more participants, more careful study design, and takes, on average, three years to complete. The treatment described here, if ultimately proved worthy, could have a profound impact on a serious genetic condition. Independent sources are identified in the story, as are the funders. But missing from the text is information describing linkages between the two funders—Spark Therapeutics and Pfizer—and the lead researchers. It’s not clear from the story that there is a financial relationship. Individuals coping with hemophilia B have few options, and the story describes the main one: injections of blood-clotting factor to stem runaway bleeding. Since the story notes that the research is at an early stage with only 10 participants, a reader can easily infer that the treatment is not yet available. However, additional information about remaining evaluation stages for this treatment would have been a useful reinforcing addition. Hemophilia B sufferers who see this story will likely be contacting their doctors. The story establishes novelty with this: The researchers presented earlier findings on the gene therapy a year ago at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting, but the latest data covers a larger patient group and a longer time period. A news release issued by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia did a good job of describing this study; the Post story could have picked up more of the salient details from that text but reveals independent reporting nevertheless by including sources not connected to the study.

Ex Output:
Gene therapy makes a big advance treating hemophilia B blood disorder


Ex Input:
Diana Nyad cries as she speaks to reporters and fans after arriving back in Key West, Florida August 9, 2011. An asthma attack, a painful shoulder and battering wind and waves forced 61-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad to abandon early on Tuesday her bid to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. REUTERS/Rob O'Neal/Florida Keys News Bureau/Handout The American, who tried and failed the 103-mile swim more than three decades ago when she was 28, gave up after enduring nearly 30 hours of a crossing expected to last 60, exhausted by her body’s limits and the force of the elements. “I thought this was my time. We set out, thinking the conditions were favorable. They were not. The winds were stronger and the waves were bigger than what I’d expected,” she told Reuters after her escort boat Bellisimo brought her to the Key West Yacht Club on Stock Island. Nyad, a veteran long-distance swimmer, had started out strongly, stroking rhythmically through calm seas after she dived off from the Marina Hemingway on the western outskirts of Cuba’s capital Havana at 7:45 p.m. EDT on Sunday. But, she said in an interview with CNN, she suffered an unexpected bout of asthma that left her gasping for oxygen. An “excruciating pain” also developed in her right shoulder and these physical handicaps combined with contrary winds and seas that pushed her floundering off course. “Last night at midnight, I was trembling, the 11 hours of asthma had taken so much from my body ... I just knew that it wasn’t mind over matter any more, I was absolutely spent,” Nyad, wearing a white bathrobe, told CNN at Stock Island. She said that toward the end she was “limping” and “slapping around” in the water and even resorted to breast stroke instead of her usual crawl. Her doctor joined her in the water at one point to try to give her relief with an inhaler. CNN, which had a producer on one of the boats accompanying Nyad, said she was vomiting when she was brought aboard an escort boat at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT) on Tuesday. Nyad, who later recovered to breakfast on scrambled eggs on her way to Key West, was disappointed but had no regrets about her motives for attempting the swim. She turns 62 this month. She had said her main aim in attempting the Cuba to Florida swim again, without a shark cage, was to help people her age and older realize they can still achieve many things. “I was the best person I could be ... that’s the message. I dug down, I dug deep ... Whatever you’re doing, do your job well,” Nyad, who has the muscled body and the steely resolve of a marathon swimmer, told CNN. Raised in southern Florida, she first tried the crossing from Cuba in 1978, but failed in the face of winds and heavy waves. The same swim was completed successfully in May 1997 by Australian Susan Maroney, who was 22 at the time. But Maroney used a shark cage. Nyad’s flotilla of escort vessels included specially equipped kayaks transmitting an anti-shark shield in the form of an electronic signal that is annoying to the sleek ocean predators that stalk the waters of the Florida Straits. When she was years younger, Nyad put herself into the record books by swimming around Manhattan in 1975 in less than eight hours and by completing a 102.5 mile swim from Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida in 1979. Despite her having to abandon her bid, her fans tweeted their admiration on Tuesday. “That was Diana’s whole point. Rethink old. Sorry she (had) to abandon but my admiration doesn’t waiver. Go Diana,” said one. Asked whether she would attempt the swim again, Nyad told CNN: “You don’t beat Mother Nature ... I think I’m going to have to go to my grave without swimming from Cuba to Florida.”

Ex Output:
Sea defeats body, not spirit, of swimmer, 61.


Ex Input:
Apollo 11′s astronauts had six months to gel as a crew and prepare for humanity’s greatest space feat. The three had never served together on the same spaceflight before, and the “almost frantic” preparation left little if any time for bonding, Collins said. “Apollo 11 was a little different than some of the other flights,” Collins explained. “We didn’t cruise around in color-coordinated Corvettes or anything like that. We were all business. We were all hard work, and we felt the weight of the world upon us.” A brief look at each man: Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon but the least inclined to talk about it. Last year’s film, “First Man,” captured his private nature; his two sons served as movie consultants. Such reticence merely reinforced the mystery surrounding the late astronaut, who by skill, hard work and chance became the first human to set foot on another world. Armstrong was superbly qualified for the job: fighter pilot in Korea, X-15 test pilot, one of only two civilians selected for the second astronaut group in 1962, Gemini 8 command pilot, backup commander of Apollo 8 and, finally, commander of Apollo 11. He’d proven his mettle again and again. He had to gain control of his tumbling Gemini 8 spacecraft in 1966 and bring it down early, and he ejected from a lunar lander training device in 1968 just before it crashed in flames in Houston. Armstrong left NASA two years after Apollo 11 and taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He spent his remaining years in his home state of Ohio. He finally agreed to a biography: 2005′s “First Man” by historian James Hansen, the basis for last year’s film. Armstrong died in 2012 at age 82. ___ Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon, but the first astronaut to have a doctorate and dance with the stars. Aldrin, now 89, had a long list of accomplishments by the time NASA chose him for the third astronaut group in 1963: third in his class at West Point, fighter pilot in Korea, Air Force officer, a doctorate in astronautics. He was dubbed Dr. Rendezvous for his expertise in orbital dockings. He flew on Gemini 12 in 1966 and was on the backup crew for Apollo 8. Then came Apollo 11. He later legally changed his name from Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. to his childhood nickname Buzz. His name was the inspiration for the character Buzz Lightyear in the animated “Toy Story” films. His mother’s name: Marion Moon. After Apollo 11, Aldrin spent years struggling with mental depression and alcoholism. He left NASA in 1971 and briefly headed the test pilot school at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Drawn toward the spotlight, Aldrin portrayed himself in a 1994 episode of the TV program “The Simpsons” and took a spin in 2010 on TV’s “Dancing with the Stars.” He’s traveled the globe, including the South Pole, pushing for Mars travel. Last year, two of his three children sought to declare him mentally incompetent, then he sued them. Both sides dropped the case in March. Aldrin moves between Satellite Beach, Florida, and Southern California. ___ Michael Collins was “The Forgotten Man” during the Apollo 11 lunar landing: While the two others were walking on the moon, he circled overhead in the command module. For previous Apollo 11 anniversaries, Collins was content to be forgotten. But with the “huge gap” left by Armstrong’s death, Collins, 88, feels compelled to speak up even though “my first inclination for celebrating the 50th anniversary ... is to go hide under a rock somewhere.” His two daughters have helped him navigate the avalanche of requests. The Air Force officer and former test pilot flew on Gemini 10 in 1966, three years after being accepted into the third astronaut group. He was supposed to be command module pilot of Apollo 8, the first manned flight to circle the moon, but was bumped because of a bone spur in his neck. Surgery corrected the problem, and he wound up on Apollo 11. Collins was astounded when reporters later asked him about being lonely as he circled the moon by himself, especially on the lunar far side, out of radio contact. “I felt like I was Neil and Buzz’s meal ticket home,” he said. “I was in no way, shape or form lonely.” Collins left NASA six months after Apollo 11. He briefly served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs and was founding director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. In an updated preface to his 1974 autobiography “Carrying the Fire,” Collins said he enjoys fishing, painting and reading near Florida’s Everglades, and feels “lucky, lucky, lucky.”

Ex Output:

Apollo 11′s ‘amiable strangers’ Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins.


