You can not "unconvince" these people because they don't operate on logic. Neither do religious folks with regard to religion, though, so I guess as a species we're mostly guilty.

If you do not believe those links that i gave, will you believe logic? In 1996, when GMOs were first introduced, the FDA(Food and Drug Administration) tested it for only a few months. Something that never existed before, created with technology that was and still is experimental, with a huge number of variables, get's the ok to be freely distributed to the entire population of the U.S. without the companies even being forced by law to specify on the labels if their products contain it. Does that make sense to you? If you don't like the word "conspiracy", will you accept "corruption" in it's place?

Also, since the late 90s-early 2000s, there has been an explosive increase in diseases in newborns and small children. Autism, cancer, heart conditions, asthma, all of these conditions have grown at a rate never before seen in recorded medical history. The only thing that changed was that people started eating GMOs. I'm not a scientist, but i cannot ignore what i see with my own eyes.

You can, I've done so occasionally. But it requires a _lot_ of effort, and there are certainly cases where all effort is in vain.

I agree with you, though, that the "not operating on logic" is the main problem. I think in the cases where I did manage to convince people to grow a bit more skeptical towards conspiracy theories, I only achieved that because during our discussions, these people did start gradually to operate more on logic.

That's also why I suggested to the OP, if he wants to convince his mother, that it'll probably required to talk about ways of reasoning, their reliability, their pitfalls, etc., during the process. That's also why it is such a darn amount of work.

I partly blame the science community, and our education system. For all we try to shove into our kids' brains, we do pretty little to teach them actual, basic reasoning, like how to evaluate evidence, or how to tell serious science from an elaborate fake. School seems to take it as granted that people develop this ability, but it's not. Heck, when I was 19 I was reading astrology books and black magic grimoires.

And the science community does very little to show non-scientists how they actually work. That makes it extremely easy for conspiracy theorists to make others believe that information is "suppressed", or that some quack is an "authority".

'sigh' again my mother is okay now I convinced her.

That's an area where I agree (partly). As I said before, I think that controls on GMO are far too lenient. Long-term studies don't even exist. Given the dangers of this technology, I view this as dangerous carelessness.

I don't see evidence for a conspiracy though. I haven't seen any evidence for corruption with regard to governments and GMO in Western countries, but - in that I agree with you also - that doesn't mean that it can't exist. The border between "corruption" and "lobbyism" is pretty fuzzy anyway.

That, however, is not logical. Lots of things have changed during this period - our food, our habits, our environment, our ability to _diagnose_ diseases (sometimes an increase in reported diseases is simply the result of improved methods of diagnosis or data collection, an explanation that laymen often overlook), etc. I don't see how you could single out one factor (GMOs) and "blame" them, while disregarding all the others.

However, the hypothesis that you presented above can actually be tested very easily. GMO has been introduced to various areas of the world at different times. So it should be very easy to collect incidence rates of the diseases you mentioned in various areas of the world, compare those to the dates at which GMO was introduced there, calculate a correlation, and test it for statistical significance. Do you have such data? Because for something that's so easy to test, I'd expect the data to be widely published. It couldn't even be "suppressed" because the analysis could be performed on demographical data that is publicly available. However, if there is _no_ such analysis available despite the relative ease of testing it, then I'd suspect that the attempts of demonstrating the claimed effect simply haven't been conclusive ...

You need to show causal links, not simply regurgitate alarmist rhetoric. "A" happened and then "B" happened does _not_ prove a causal link between A and B.

Taking one of your examples "autism" there are studies which suggest that there is no "epidemic" at all - it is simply that the definition of Autism, and how to diagnose it, has changed. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-increase-in-autism-diagnoses-two-hypotheses/.

I know, I was talking in general. :) The discussion has kind of shifted away from the original post, towards a more general level. :)

That can explain autism, but not all the other diseases. By the way, did you know that the medical association of your country asked for a ban on GMOs?



http://www.ghorganics.com/GM%20food%20can%20cause%20cancer.htm

Probably caused by video games. They should ban that filth. :p

I try to avoid arguing with these sort of people the same way I don't argue the existence of Santa Claus with 8 year olds.

don't forget about the Tooth Fairy or the BoogeyMan behind their closet or under their bed

Vaccines cause autism! :crazymode:

Michele Bachmann says the vaccine to prevent HPV causes mental retardation :crazymode:

And it was a celeb that is primarily noted for taking her clothes off that said it. It must be true!

/sarcasm