Alternaphobia ? Omoiosophobia? Eteraphobia?

Lately I've been trying to come up with the word that best describes an aversion to considering the alternatives.

Alternaphobia sounds too contrived. Omoiosophobia (aversion to similar things) is too alliterative. For want of a better Greek word, Im thinking of proposing "etera" meaning "other" -- so it would be "eteraphobia."

The reason I've been trying to create a useful label is that I keep seeing this aversion to alternatives over and over again. And it's not just guys like me refusing to stop and ask for directions. Everywhere I turn there seems to be an aversion to considering the alternatives to serious things.

War in the Middle east? No alternative oil reserves.

Global warming? No alternatives to gasoline.

Malaria and West Nile virus? No alternatives to DDT.

Fuel additives? No alternatives to lead (or MTBE, or BTX).

Fire protection? No alternatives to asbestos.

Electric power? Choice of coal, gas or nukes. No alternatives.

Safe cars? No alternative to SUVs.

The list goes on and on.

In each of these cases, alternatives have existed for decades and are well known to experts. Mineral wool works just as well as asbestos. Venezuela has bigger oil fields than all of the Middle East. DDT is not the last word in malaria control. Renewable energy is more affordable than nuclear power. SUVs, for all their bulk, are not as safe as other cars. In some cases, the experts have strong interests in the old technologies.

The classic historical example is the 1925 case of a Standard Oil (Exxon) executive who testified that there was no substitute for leaded gasoline, a "gift from heaven" -- and then fired off a secret memo about threats from substitutes to leaded gasoline that were coming on the market.

In recent years, US Department of Energy officials have said the energy future was: "coal, oil and nuclear power, and that's it." How seriously can we take their claim that there are no real alternatives, when nearly all research and subsidies go to coal, oil and nuclear power?

Or take Middle East oil. Wars have raged for it, but is it true that two thirds of the world's oil is found in the Middle East? In fact, two thirds of only one category of oil -- "proven" reserves -- is found in the Middle East. It's not two thirds of all known oil. The world's largest known oil field is located in Venezuela. True, its oil is heavier and would take an extra 25 to 50 cents a gallon to process, but then, that minor additional expense hasn't exactly been on the list of alternatives.

In other cases, there are political points to be scored by ignoring the alternatives. Two years ago there was a claim that if asbestos had not been banned during the World Trade Center construction, the WTC would have held up during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Much to the dismay of cleanup workers, it turned out plenty of asbestos had been used. Even so, engineers later said that no amount would have held the buildings up against the attacks. Score: zero.

Or take the case of supposed mass murders by environmentalists. According to fiction writer and right-wing extremist Michael Crichton, "environmentalists have killed 30 million people" in the past 30 years because DDT was banned. This is supposedly because:

1 -- Environmentalists pushed for a DDT ban despite questionable scientific evidence, thus dooming people in developing nations to massive malaria epidemics; and

2 -- Environmentalism is an irrational, pseudo-religious approach to life and not the rigorous, scientific, dispassionate approach to facts that should guide us.

The DDT example had been used by political conservatives in the past, but this year Crichton has elevated it to a new level by putting crunchy granolas in the same category as Hitler, Stalin and Atilla the Hun. His hysteria aside, here's why the case was already weak:

In the first place, bans on agricultural use of DDT never extended to public health uses in developing nations. DDT is still widely used where needed for public health. Nor have environmentalists opposed this. Non-governmental organizations sitting at UN treaty conventions have never opposed limited use of persistant organic pollutants when human lives were at stake.

In the second place, there are dozens of effective and acceptable alternatives to DDT. All he would have had to do was call up a "Google" search on the Web to find thousands of references to DDT alternatives.

Score, once again, zero. But again we see eteraphobia -- fear of the other, the alternative, the road not taken.

If Crichton wants to talk about the scientific method, he can hardly claim to be scientific on the one hand and then insult environmental scientists by calling them cult members and mass murderers on the other.

The scientific method dispassionately considers all alternatives. Scientist and philosopher Carl Hempel in Aspects of Scientific Explanation notes that an adequate scientific explanation considers "first of all, what consequences each of the different alternative choices is likely to have."

But that's not what Crichton and other eteraphobics are all about. They want to wrap their political views in the mantle of scientific objectivity and, like the standard oil executive, insist that their product (or wisdom) is the only gift from heaven.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

*Reprinted with permission of Bill Kovarik of Radford University in Virginia.