Cathie Martin

Cathie Martin is a plant biotechnology researcher who has been a group leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich UK since 1983. She is professor at the University of East Anglia. According to her biography on the JIC website in 2012:

I am inventor on seven patents and I recently co-founded a spin-out company (Norfolk Plant Sciences) with Professor Jonathan Jones FRS, to bring the benefits of plant biotechnology to Europe and the US.

She is best known for her work on a GM purple tomato that in 2008 was hyped in headlines that claimed it could help "beat cancer" – a claim that stemmed from the JIC's own press release – as well as keep you slim, ward off diabetes and safeguard eyesight. This was based on the fact that the tomato was engineered to contain high levels of anthocyanins, substances that are commonly available in a long list of existing fruit and vegetables. Their role, if any, in disease prevention is poorly understood, and non-GM purple tomatoes are available.

Four years later, in 2012, Martin and her team at the JIC generated another GM health hype story. This time thay had worked out how to genetically engineer the gene for anthocyanins (a flavanoid) in blood oranges into ordinary oranges, and then called a press conference. Once again their claims generated headlines about beating heart disease, controlling diabetes and reducing obesity, although they seemed to have skipped the curing cancer claims this time.

In a story by Steve Connor of The Independent titled "Scientists create new orange superjuice to help beat heart disease", Martin claimed that you can "improve your cardiovascular risk factors" – based on "one unpublished experiment" with non-GM blood orange juice.

GMWatch commented: "Now what is it that the GM attack dogs, including those at the JIC, have always said about claims based on unpublished experiments? Yes, that's right: 'Quit the grandstanding and show us the peer reviewed evidence.'"

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