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Letters: Reverse placebo effect?

Letter writer comments on cell phone towers and the health concerns

You’ve got to be kidding -- a town without cellphones?Maybe, internet and Wi-fi.

To all those people who are worried about radio waves affecting their health, I would suggest googling neutrinos, cosmic rays, and plastic off gassing. If this doesn’t cure them of their hypochondriacal fixation on radio waves, nothing will.

One might wonder to oneself, why there are people who clearly experience symptoms living near radio transmitters. I propose that it is a reverse placebo effect. People believe something is causing a problem, and so they exhibit symptoms, just as in the placebo effect. People believe they are receiving curative medicine, and so their symptoms disappear. It is hard to imagine an entire town susceptible to reverse placebo effect, but then again it is hard to imagine Salem, Massachusetts.

P.S. I myself find that I have very little tolerance for vestiges of the 17th century seeping into the 21st century. However quaint, the idea may appeal to some.

N.E. MacNab

Shirley