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Thank you for all your responses to my questioning the need for a biopsy
in diagnosing celiac disease.

I received several responses stressing that the biopsies were not painful
or difficult procedures.  It was also stressed that the biopsy is the
only sure and definitive way to confirm a diagnosis for celiac disease.
A biopsy also allows one to rule out celiac disease if there are actually
other factors causing the symptoms.

All of these statements make sense,  particularly the one which stresses
that it would be hard to subject someone to a gluten-free diet for the
rest of their life without knowing for sure.

I did have a discussion with my doctor yesterday and based on this
discussion, decided to not have Rhett undergo the biopsy.  For my doctor,
it was really an issue of wanting to be 100% certain before having to
subject Rhett to a gluten-free diet.  He recognized the difficulty of
maintaining the diet and didn't want to insist upon it until we had 100%
certainty.  I asked him whether the anti-endomysial and anti-gliadin
antibodies in subsequent blood tests would alter, after putting Rhett on
a gluten free diet.  He said that they should,  if Rhett did actually
have cd.  So I am going to use Rhett's growth or lack thereof, as well as
the blood tests to confirm whether Rhett has celiac disease.
I also asked him if there were other conditions that the biopsy would
find if it wasn't celiac disease.  He said that if it wasnt celiac
disease,  the cause would still probably stem from the intestine, and he
would look for Chron's disease or Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome, but that
these occur lower in the intestinal tract and a biopsy for cd would not
detect these conditions. With this further information and my doctors
consent,  I decided that this would be a preferable way for us to go about
it.