Features

Three Daughters of Eve

Elif Shafak

UK: Viking/Penguin Random House, 2016

Pp. 367

Though filled with drama, passion, love and betrayal, “Three Daughters of Eve” is essentially a novel of ideas. The main character, Peri, is tormented by the dilemmas facing modern Turkey, chiefly tension between the secularism upon which the republic was founded, and the growing religiosity of society at large. 

Around this main theme, author Elif Shafak weaves commentary on numerous other subjects: feminism, class differences, the after-effects of 9/11, the relation of state power to religion and wealth, and Istanbul’s urban problems.

Peri first appears as a well-adjusted, 35-year-old wife and mother. But a bizarre event, as she is driving to meet her husband at a party, disrupts her complacency. “A crack had appeared in the dam she had erected over the years to block the flow of unwanted emotions into her heart.” (p. 148)

“Random memories, repressed anxieties, untold secrets, and guilt, plenty of guilt” came flooding back. (p. 44)

The novel traces these memories, and why they are so traumatic, by shuttling between 1980s Turkey, when Peri was growing up, to Oxford where she studied in 2000-2002, and now-time in Istanbul 2016. Her father being an adamant secularist and her mother a very devout Muslim, their home was the scene of constant discord, and Peri was always caught in the middle. She identified more closely with her father, who was not an atheist, but decried the suppression of free thinking, saying: “In the name of religion they are killing God. For the sake of discipline and authority, they forget love.” (p. 87) 

Peri’s uncertainty increased after her brother was arrested for his leftist activities in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup; the family further unravelled, and a deep sadness settled in their home. Peri began to quarrel with God, mainly because she couldn’t understand why he allowed such injustice in the world. At her father’s suggestion, she began to keep a diary of her thoughts on God.

When Peri has the chance to study at Oxford, she broadens her intellectual horizons, but her obsession with studying keeps her socially isolated except for her close friendship with two other women: the daring, unorthodox, Iranian-origin Sherin, and Mona, an Egyptian American, who is as committed to political and social cause, as she is to being a devout Muslim and wearing hijab. With Peri still uncertain about spiritual matters, they become a trio of unlikely friends, dubbed “the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused”. Shafak uses this trio to explore the divergent ways of thinking and life styles that can evolve among those of Muslim background.

At Shirin’s urging, Peri signs up for a philosophy seminar on God, taught by the charismatic Professor Azur, which is not so much about God as about how philosophers have thought about God over the ages, and how people can discuss their disagreements on the subject in a constructive way, without animosity. This should have been the perfect continuation of the quest Peri had started with her God diary, but still answers elude her. 

While at Oxford, she writes: “Is there really no other way, no other space for things that fall under neither belief or disbelief — neither pure religion nor pure reason? A third path for people such as me? For those of us who find dualities too rigid and don’t want to conform to them?... It is as if I’m searching for a new language.” (p. 57) 

Peri’s quest to define her identity and her relationship to God is to have unforeseen consequences. While her quest appears as a metaphor for the trajectory of modern Turkey, she is never reduced to a mere symbol. Her life is governed as much by random events, personal feelings and choices, and unexpected human behaviour, as by her spiritual quest. The plot is as messy as real life can be, with some characters’ motives remaining ambiguous and contradictory. Via Peri’s uncertainty and traumas, Shafak seems to be arguing for the acceptance of multiple forms of spirituality, free of dogma — a theme which often appears in her writing. In this sense, the implications of the story are not limited to Turkey.

Peri’s love of words, books and learning is a recurring theme in the book. To her, “Books were liberating, full of life. She preferred being in Storyland to being in her motherland.” (p. 71)

One feels this aspect of Peri mirrors the author herself. The many philosophical references included in the story attest that Shafak has read widely and deeply.

“Three Daughters of Eve” is very readable due Shafak’s wonderfully flowing prose, her vivid imagination, out-of-the-box perceptions and adept handling of burning questions. Her words are tactile and sensuous, whether describing the weather in Britain, Peri’s interior world or the chaos of Istanbul’s streets. She constructs her plot cleverly, sowing hints about the past, but one doesn’t know the source of Peri’s guilt until the very end. “Three Daughters of Eve” is available at Books@cafe.

People who have disrupted sleep cycles or less variation in their activity levels around the clock may be more likely to have depression, bipolar disorders and other mental health issues, a UK study suggests. 

Past research has found that people with a circadian rhythm, or biological clock, that’s out of step with their daily routines — like split shift or night shift workers — can have an increased risk of emotional, behavioural and psychological problems. 

The current study examined 24-hour activity levels for 91,015 participants who agreed to wear accelerometers on their wrists for one week in 2013-2014 and completed mental health surveys a few years later. 

Researchers focused on so-called relative amplitude, or how much people’s activity levels varied between their busiest and most restful portions of a 24-hour cycle. They scored circadian amplitude from zero to one, with higher values reflecting a clearer distinction between the least and most active parts of the day and lower values indicating too little daytime activity, too much nighttime activity, or both. 

On average, participants had a relative amplitude level of 0.87, which is similar to what would be expected in a healthy population, the study found. 

When researchers sorted participants into five groups, or quintiles, based on the amplitude results, they found that each one-quintile reduction in relative amplitude was associated with 6 per cent higher lifetime risk of major depressive disorder, an 11 per cent greater risk of bipolar disorder and 2 per cent higher likelihood of mood instability. 

“Regulating circadian rhythms is an important part of maintaining optimal mood and cognitive functioning,” said Raymond Lam, a psychiatry researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved in the study. 

“That includes having a regular sleep schedule [sleeping and waking at about the same times], keeping active and exercising [which helps to regulate rhythms], avoiding late night light exposure [such as from mobile devices], and avoiding or addressing the circadian disruptions from shift work,” Lam said by e-mail. 

One limitation of the study, however, is that it measured activity levels at one point in time and mental health conditions were assessed at a different time. It also wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how variation in sleep cycles or activity might directly cause psychological problems — or the reverse. 

This makes it unclear which might have come first — the disrupted circadian rhythm or the mood disorder, said Aiden Doherty, author of an accompanying commentary and a researcher at the University of Oxford in the UK. 

“More research is needed to understand the long-term consequences of circadian disruption,” Doherty said by e-mail. “Therefore current public health guidelines on physical activity [150 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise] and sleep [seven to nine hours per night] should still be followed.” 

In addition to mood disorders, the study also linked lower relative amplitude levels to lower subjective ratings of happiness and health satisfaction, as well as higher odds of reporting loneliness and slower reaction times. 

These results suggest that measuring relative amplitude might be an affordable and simple way to help predict which people are at greater risk for developing serious mental health problems like depression and bipolar disorder, lead study author Laura Lyall of the University of Glasgow, and colleagues, write in The Lancet Psychiatry. 

Even though the study does not show whether sleep problems cause mood disorders or whether mental health issues lead to sleep difficulties, the results still suggest people may feel better when they try to keep their routines in sync with their circadian rhythm, said Dr Teodour Postolache, a psychiatry researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore who was not involved in the study.

For starters, people should make sleep as restful as possible, activity as vigorous as possible, and align their schedules with daylight and evening hours as much as possible, Postolache said by e-mail.

“Light, noise control, physical activity, environmental temperature, stress mitigation, relaxation, yoga and maintaining durations and schedules for sleep-wake cycles are all important when possible,” Postolache said.

TAMPA — A NASA robot has detected more building blocks for life on Mars — the most complex organic matter yet — from 3.5 billion-year-old rocks on the surface of the Red Planet, scientists said on Thursday.

The unmanned Curiosity rover has also found increasing evidence for seasonal variations of methane on Mars, indicating the source of the gas is likely the planet itself, or possibly its subsurface water.

While not direct evidence of life, the compounds drilled from Mars’ Gale Crater are the most diverse array ever taken from the surface of the planet since the robotic vehicle landed in 2012, experts say.

“This is a significant breakthrough because it means there are organic materials preserved in some of the harshest environments on Mars,” said lead author of one of two studies in Science, Jennifer Eigenbrode, an astrobiologist at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centre.

“And maybe we can find something better preserved than that, that has signatures of life in it,” she told AFP.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has previously found organic matter on Mars. A smaller discovery was announced in 2014.

“This is the first really trusted detection,” co-author Sanjeev Gupta, a professor of Earth science at Imperial College London, told AFP. 

“What this new study is showing in some detail is the discovery of complex and diverse organic compounds in the sediments. That does not mean life, but organic compounds are the building blocks of life,” he added.

“This is the first time we have detected such a diverse array of these sorts of things.”

The compounds might have come from a meteorite, or from geological formations akin to coal and black shale on Earth, or some form of life, Eigenbrode said.

Their precise source is still a mystery.

“We have detected the bits and pieces of something bigger,” said Eigenbrode.

The samples were drilled from the base of Mount Sharp, inside a basin called Gale Crater that is believed to have held an ancient Martian lake.

“That is a good place for life to have lived if it ever existed on Mars,” she said.

The mudstone rock was drilled from the top five centimetres of the Martian surface and heated in a miniature analysis lab located on board the rover.

A French-built instrument revealed “several organic molecules and volatiles reminiscent of organic-rich sedimentary rock found on Earth, including: thiophene, 2- and 3-methylthiophenes, methanethiol, and dimethylsulfide”, said the Science report.

The other paper in Science reported on new details in the search for the source of methane on Mars, which has wide spikes and dips according to the seasons.

Methane, the simplest organic molecule, ranges “between 0.24 to 0.65 parts per billion, peaking near the end of summer in the Northern hemisphere”, said the report, based on three years of data.

The source is still unclear, but it may be stored in the cold Martian subsurface in water-based crystals called clathrates, researchers said.

“Both these findings are breakthroughs in astrobiology,” wrote Inge Loes ten Kate, of the University of Tübingen in Germany, in an accompanying commentary in Science.

“The detection of organic molecules and methane on Mars has far-ranging implications in light of potential past life on Mars,” she said.

“Curiosity has shown that Gale crater was habitable around 3.5 billion years ago, with conditions comparable to those on the early Earth, where life evolved around that time.

“The question of whether life might have originated or existed on Mars is a lot more opportune now that we know that organic molecules were present on its surface at that time.”

According to Ariel Anbar, a professor at Arizona State University who directed the college’s NASA-funded astrobiology programme from 2009 to 2015, the work “definitely moves the ball down the court in important ways.”

It “defines how questions will be asked and pursued in the next stage of Mars exploration,” Anbar, who was not involved in the study, told AFP by email.

Scientists hope to further the search for signs of life on Mars with the European and Russian rover, ExoMars, scheduled to land in 2021.

It will drill even deeper than any prior instrument, up to two metres deep.

NASA also has another rover in the works with its Mars 2020 mission, which plans to drill cores and set them aside for a possible future pickup and return to Earth. 

It stinks. You’re a tween or teen and you’re told that you have to wear glasses. Gone, you fret, is your chance of getting the guy or girl you’ve been eyeing (or squinting at) from afar.

That is the bad news. Here is the good: You are probably more intelligent than your frames-free competition.

Research published in the prestigious British journal Nature found that people who displayed higher levels of intelligence were almost 30 per cent more likely to wear glasses or need contact lenses.

In the study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, a team from Scotland’s University of Edinburgh looked at data from about 300,000 people and determined people with high cognitive performance (aka intelligence) were more likely to have poor eyesight.

The analysis, which was part of a broader study about inherited genes affecting general intelligence, found “significant genetic overlap between general cognitive function, reaction time, and many health variables including eyesight, hypertension, and longevity”.

In other words, you may be as blind as a bat, but you are more likely to be a healthy and intelligent one. The study also found that those with higher cognitive function also tended to have a decreased risk of specific types of cancer and healthier hearts.

For many, the link between eyesight and intelligence does not come as a surprise. And then there is the nerd factor.

For instance, as England’s The Guardian newspaper pointed out, some defence lawyers get their clients to wear glasses — often fake ones — at trials. As lawyer Harvey Slovis told New York magazine, “Glasses soften their appearance so that they don’t look capable of committing a crime. I’ve tried cases where there’s been a tremendous amount of evidence,” he continued, “but my client wore glasses and got acquitted. The glasses create a kind of unspoken nerd defence”.

But criminal or not, it is probably not wise to rush out and buy a pair of non-prescription spectacles. A 2010 Scientific American study cited by the website BigThink.com shows that fake glasses overwhelmingly tend to make wearers more dishonest. Ouch!

Meanwhile, style-bible GQ declared that wearing fake glasses or ditching longtime use of contact lenses in favour of a framed face — a trend among several celebrities — constitutes “bottom-of-the-barrel hipster behaviour” and “make you look like an adult Harry Potter impersonator”.

And so, fretful teenager, the tables have been turned.

TOKYO — From a piggy bank that demands your cash to a pump-action gun blasting damp toilet roll pellets: Tokyo’s toy show has a bewildering array of gadgets to delight both kids and the young-at-heart.

Gone are the days of the humble pink porcelain piggy bank. Today’s frugal kids get an Internet-connected, cat-shaped device that sings, chats and even demands to be fed with cash.

The BankNyan, one of the hits at the Tokyo Toy Show that opened on Thursday, has sensors to judge how much money is being saved for a rainy day and — with its Internet connection — can even tell you if it is actually likely to rain.

The cat-faced machine, the epitome of Japanese “cute”, senses when a child enters the room and immediately strikes up conversation, using one of its 1,400 phrases.

But the piggy bank of the future is a demanding character: two of its stock phrases are “Give me all your money!” and “Now’s the time to save.”

If it is successful in persuading the child to part with some pocket money, it calculates a running total — no more shaking the bank trying to guess how many coins are left.

It can also sense how much is withdrawn but does not give up its cash without a guilt trip, asking whether the child is absolutely sure he or she wants to take the money out.

Parents might want to start saving themselves, though, as such cutting-edge technology does not come cheap: the BankNyan retails at around 10,000 yen ($90).

Much more low-tech but for the ultimate in toilet humour, is the “skid shot”, a pump-action toy shotgun with a loo roll attachment for bathroom ballistics.

The marksman pulls back a lever that feeds a small amount of toilet paper into a chamber where it is wetted and compressed into a perfect “bullet”.

Up to two pellets can be fired at a time, making a satisfying “splat” on the wall or, at the show, a bullseye target.

‘Magic putty’

Another toy sure to delight kids who love to make a mess is magic putty showcased by EP.

This gooey substance comes with a head-spinning variety of options: you can bounce it, stretch it, make it dance with magnets and several putties change colour under sunlight or at a certain temperature.

Made of silicone and satisfyingly squeezy, it also comes in psychedelic colours and with sugary smells made to resemble food products like caramel or bright-pink cake topping.

Parents be reassured though: it is designed not to stick to furniture or clothes, although a spokesman admitted: “It can sometimes get stuck in your hair.”

Around 200 toy manufacturers from all around the world are exhibiting their latest delights at the show, which runs until Sunday and expects to welcome some 160,000 visitors.

While the show stresses its global nature, many of the exhibits are classically “only in Japan”, with more Godzilla and Hello Kitty than even the most enthusiastic fan could handle.

A prime example: an applauding robot for solo karaoke artists. The singer takes the pint-sized companion with two hands sticking out of its head to the karaoke booth, and it claps in time along to the music and enthusiastically applauds when the hit is finished.

Another high-tech innovation impressing visitors was the “Printoss”, for those wanting an instant souvenir of a happy moment.

In the shape of a small toy van, the Printoss is a mini photo printer. The user grabs a smartphone selfie, places the phone on top of the “van” and a few seconds later, a small Polaroid-style photo is ejected from the back.

Women who eat a lot of fast food may take longer to become pregnant and be more likely to experience infertility than their counterparts, who rarely if ever eat these types of meals, a recent study suggests. 

Compared with women who generally avoided fast food, women who indulged four or more times a week before they conceived took almost a month longer to become pregnant, the study of 5,598 first-time mothers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK found. 

Overall, 2,204 women, or 39 per cent, conceived within one month of when they began having sex with their partner without contraception and 468, or 8 per cent, experienced infertility and failed to conceive after 12 months of trying. 

While women who rarely or never ate fast food had an 8 per cent risk of infertility, the risk was 16 per cent among women who ate fast food at least four times weekly. 

“Fast foods contain high amounts of saturated fat, sodium, and sometimes sugar,” said lead study author Jessica Grieger of the Robinson Research Institute and the University of Adelaide in Australia. 

“Although these dietary components and their relationship to fertility has not been specifically studied in human pregnancies, higher amounts of saturated fatty acids were identified in oocytes [an egg cell in the ovary] of women undergoing assisted reproduction and studies in mice have demonstrated that a high fat diet had a toxic effect on the ovaries,” Grieger said by e-mail. “We believe that fast food may be one factor mediating infertility through altered ovarian function.” 

Roughly one in ten women of childbearing age have difficulty getting pregnant. Most of the time, it is caused by problems with ovulation, often related to a hormone imbalance known as polycystic ovarian syndrome. Some signs that a woman is not ovulating normally include irregular or absent menstrual periods. 

Less-common causes of infertility in women can include blocked fallopian tubes, structural problems with the uterus or uterine fibroids. 

The risk increases with age and can also be exacerbated by smoking, excessive drinking, stress, an unhealthy diet, too much exercise, being overweight or obese or having sexually transmitted infections. 

Women in the current study were typically overweight and most of them ate fast food at least twice a week, the study team notes in Human Reproduction. 

Researchers also looked at how often women ate fruit and found that those who had it less than once a month took half a month longer to become pregnant than women who ate at least three fruit servings a day. 

With the lowest fruit intake, the risk of infertility was 12 per cent, compared to 8 per cent with the highest fruit consumption. 

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how the amount of fruit or fast food women consume might impact their fertility. Another limitation is that researchers relied on dietary questionnaires women completed during prenatal visits that asked them to recall how they ate in the month before they conceived — a method that is not always accurate. 

“A lot of maternal lifestyle factors are associated with infertility, like smoking, alcohol drinking or obesity,” said Joachim Dudenhausen, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. 

The current study offers fresh evidence of the role diet can play in helping women conceive, Dudenhausen, who was not involved in the study, said by e-mail. 

“There are some studies showing that preconception intake of fruits and fish increase fertility,” Dudenhausen said. “The study is in the same line and has clear data supporting the advice for women who wish to get pregnant to have greater intake of fruit and lower intake of fast food.”

SAN FRANCISCO — After a decade of sizzling growth, the smartphone market has suddenly cooled.

Surveys show smartphone sales last year shrank slightly for the first time since the 2007 debut of the iPhone, and preliminary data this year suggests further deceleration.

Analysts say several factors have hit the smartphone market including the lack of new features that wow consumers, people holding their devices longer and the saturation of key markets including China, which had been driving growth.

“The market has peaked, that is the bottom line,” said Bob O’Donnell, analyst and consultant with Technalysis Research.

“It is for sure not the death of the smartphone; it is the death of the growth of the smartphone market.”

The smartphone market began to hit saturation in 2016, much the way the tablet and personal computer markets did years earlier.

“It doesn’t mean it is not a strong market — it is a huge market — but it means vendors have to think differently,” O’Donnell told AFP.

Smartphone sellers with slices of the market should no longer count on a fast-growing pie and instead rely on shrewd competitive moves to ramp up revenues, according to analysts.

Samsung remains the market leader, according to surveys, but its lead over Apple has slipped. 

China’s Huawei is holding the number three spot and rival Chinese maker Xiaomi has been growing rapidly despite the lack of a US presence.

China focal point

International Data Corporation (IDC) said 2017 smartphone sales fell 0.1 per cent to 1.472 billion devices, largely due to weak fourth quarter shipments.

IDC expects another decline in 2018 before a rebound from new phones for 5G networks and India’s vibrant market.

The “biggest driver” of the downturn last year was said by IDC and others to be the China market.

IDC forecast that the smartphone market in China would flatten out next year, while sales in India were expected to continue to boom on low-priced handsets.

“China remains the focal point for many, given that it consumes roughly 30 per cent of the world’s smartphones,” IDC analyst Ryan Reith said.

A catalyst for a smartphone rebound may be the arrival next year of devices tailored for ultrafast 5G telecommunications networks, according to IDC.

For now, the sector appears sluggish.

Counterpoint Research said the handset market dropped three per cent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, a second straight quarterly decline.

“The waning smartphone demand is due to a slowdown in developed markets, where replacement cycles are lengthening with overall smartphone features and design reaching its peak,” said Counterpoint analyst Tarun Pathak.

“However, emerging markets still offer a sizeable opportunity.”

Handsets powered by Google-backed Android mobile were expected to continue to dominate the smartphone market, with a share of about 85 per cent remaining relatively stable during the coming five years.

“There is no question that Android is the OS, [operating system] of choice for the mass market and nothing leads us to believe this will change,” IDC said in its forecast.

Whither Apple?

While smartphone shipments will ebb this year, the average selling price will rise more than 10 per cent to $345 and remain on an upward trend, said IDC research manager Anthony Scarsella.

“This year will continue to focus on the ultrahigh-end segment of the market as we expect a surge of premium flagship devices to launch in developed markets,” Scarsella said.

As economies improve in countries around the world, more people can afford to switch to premium models.

Premium smartphones, however, will be under pressure to show they are worth the price paid to upgrade from budget-friendly models, according to analysts.

Apple has weathered the market slump better than its rivals but remains under pressure to impress consumers after introducing its iPhone X priced at $1,000 and up.

“With its exclusive focus on premium smartphones, Apple needs to significantly raise the overall experience of its next-generation iPhones to trigger replacements and lead to solid growth in the near future,” Gartner research director Anshul Gupta said.

Apple could unveil some of its strategy at its developers conference opening Monday in California. 

But some analysts warn that Apple is not thinking ahead to how consumers will interact with technology beyond the smartphone.

ABI Research analyst David McQueen said in a December report that Apple is lagging rivals like Google and Amazon in developing new kinds of devices, and that Apple will be a “follower” in the “post-smartphone era”.

“This next wave of innovation in the smart device ecosystem will be led by Google and Amazon, as their apparent strength in major growth sectors, notably computer science, allows for a more flexible approach to next-generation user experiences,” said McQueen.

In the last decade or so, I was not able to watch movies with the frequency that I would have liked to. There were social engagements and other time consuming tasks that took precedence over this most wonderful activity. 

Like a true cinema buff, I could repeatedly see the same film again and again. It did not have to be a particularly spectacular motion picture but if it was a cult classic, then, I would exasperate even myself by the number of reruns that I subjected myself to. 

One of the positives of this addiction was that I had better recall than any other movie reviewer. And that was because when I missed a particular shot, scene, or drama at the first screening, I was able to correct the mistake at my subsequent viewings.

The business of movie making was a very tricky one indeed. There were no set formulas for what might catch the fancy of the audiences and set the cash registers ringing. Occasionally, most randomly, all the ingredients fitted like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and blockbusters were created. But in other instances, despite every good intention, things did not crystallise, and the outcome was disastrous. The entire process was far more complicated than one could ever fathom and fortunes were made and lost with every success or failure. 

Not much of all this paranoia or heartbreak filtered down to the spectators, especially in India, my home country. Bollywood, which was the largest producer of celluloid films in the world, had all the glamour, money, fan-power and recognition for those who were successful in this field. However, sleaze, drugs and depression were the outcome for the ones who failed. As the saying goes, there was many a slip between the cup and the lip!

Whenever a big budget movie flopped, it shattered even the most established of actors for the next few years- at the very least. To re-establish credibility, trust and faith took long, and sometimes the blow was permanent and irrevocable. 

Therefore we had some film stars who were remembered as “one movie wonders”. These were the unfortunate people who were launched as young newcomers in their first picture that went on to become a super duper hit. People flocked to the theatres to watch the film constantly and the youngsters turned into heroes from zeroes, so to speak. But after the euphoria died down, their subsequent films could never quite match up. To the spectacular success of the initial one, that is. And they gradually disappeared into oblivion. 

Kumar Gaurav was one of them. His debut movie, “Love story” that was released in the year 1981, was so successful that he became a teenage sensation overnight. It broke all the records at the box office and remains one of the most popular romantic films in Bollywood history. But after that it was all downhill and today there are hardly any viewers who can even recall his name.

“What an interesting beverage that lady is having,” I remarked at a beachside restaurant in Mauritius recently.

“It is called Love story,” the waiter informed me.

“Like the Erich Segal book?” I asked.

“Or the Kumar Gaurav movie?” I quizzed.

“The Ryan O’Neil movie you mean” he corrected.

“That was the Hollywood one,” I agreed.

“There was a Bollywood version too?” he questioned.

“Yes, starring Kumar Gaurav,” I answered.

“Never heard of him,” he replied unblinkingly.

“Ok! Just get me the drink,” I mumbled.

PARIS — A woman with an aggressive form of breast cancer which defied chemotherapy and spread to other organs, was cured with an experimental treatment that triggered her immune system, researchers said on Monday.

The woman has been cancer-free for two years, reported the US-based team, presenting their results as “a new immunotherapy approach” for the treatment of patients with a late-stage form of the disease.

Other experts not involved in the work hailed it as “exciting”.

So-called “immunotherapy” has already been shown to work in some people with cancer of the lung, cervix, blood cells (leukaemia), skin (melanoma) and bladder.

But an immune breakthrough for bowel, breast and ovary cancer has remained elusive.

In the latest study, a team extracted immune cells called lymphocytes from the patient, tweaked them in the lab, then reinjected them.

The woman was 49 when she signed up for the clinical trial after several attempts at a cure through conventional treatments had failed, said the study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.

The cancer had spread to various parts of her body, including the liver.

A person’s immune system is designed to kill invaders, including rogue, cancerous cells. But it can fail, often because it cannot recognise cancer cells containing the patient’s own DNA.

Immunotherapy trains a patient’s own immune cells to recognise and fight cancer.

For the new study, researchers took lymphocytes from a tumour in the woman’s body and scanned them for specific types which reacted to mutant, cancerous cells.

Complete regression

These were reactivated or “switched on” in the lab and injected back, along with a so-called “immune checkpoint inhibitor” — another type of immunotherapy that has shown success in other types of cancer.

This resulted in a “highly personalised” anti-cancer therapy that yielded “complete tumour regression”, the researchers wrote.

In a comment also published by Nature Medicine, expert Laszlo Radvanyi from Canada’s Ontario Institute for Cancer Research said the woman’s response to the treatment was “unprecedented” for such advanced breast cancer.

This work showed “we are now at the cusp of a major revolution in finally realising the elusive goal of being able to target the plethora of mutations in cancer through immunotherapy”, he wrote.

In a reaction via the Science Media Centre in London, immunotherapy professor Alan Melcher of The Institute of Cancer Research said the trial was “fascinating and exciting”.

The work “provides a major ‘proof-of-principle step forward, in showing how the power of the immune system can be harnessed to attack even the most difficult-to-treat cancers”, he said.

Peter Johnson, an oncology professor at the Cancer Research UK Centre, said the study confirmed the immune system can recognise some cancers, and “if this can be stimulated in the right way, even cancers that have spread to different parts of the body may be treatable”.

The technique is “highly specialised and complex”, he cautioned, and may not be suitable for many patients.