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On August 26, Don Kasarda commented on the statement "that there is a
minimum level of gluten ingestion that will not cause damage."

 As a scientist, I agree with Don that each of us can tolerate some low
level of gluten. As a scientist, however, I may mean something different by
that than a non-scientist might.  What I mean:  we'd know just exactly what
the extra (low, very low, very very low..depending on our choice) risk of
getting cancer for a corresponding amount of gluten was. That is, no damage
threshhold, no "safe" amount?! That's right, that's the conservative
starting point. The Holmes paper, and still better its follow-on in the
Marsh book, is a good start on understanding the connection between gluten
and cancer. Yes, if you eat less gluten, your risk will be less, but
somewhere for each of us there'd be a point at which the extra effort in
excluding more wouldn't  seem worth it. So there's both an objective and
subjective side to the question.

Alas, the relative numbers for both risk and gluten intake are very hard to
pin down (for the cancer due to the small number of cancers found relative
to other  cancers, for the gluten intake due to current testing
limitations).  Still, the relative risk for getting a GI cancer from the
gluten in a normal diet seems to be 10- 100 times the normal rate for these
same cancers. (Based on the Holmes article and that Marsh chapter.)

Cutting gluten from a normal diet by a factor of  300 or so then would look
pretty "safe" to me. That would leave  the separate question of whether in
this intake range, nutritional needs could be met. Perhaps one of the
doctors would like to comment on this?

                             Kemp Randolph
                              Long Island
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