<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

I want to start with the recently discovered given that many geneticists
nowadays believe there are genotypes for certain problems that do not quite
reach the level or severity of the diagnosed problem.

For instance, they posit that if it takes 8 different genetic markers to
make a true schizophrenic or autistic, some people may have only 5, 6, or 7
of them. These incomplete schizophrenics? then manifest many of the
symptoms of the psychotic, but never quite get completely out of touch with
reality. And this may, of course, be a sliding scale of relativity from
severe to mild. I know a couple of people here on the faculty that seem to
have no awareness nor concern with anyone elses reactions to anything as if
they were just almost autistics.

Now starting with this info? would it be fruitful many times to think of
celiacs in the same way? There seem to be so many "pseudo-celiacs" like me
around this list. I don't just have a simple wheat intolerance or allergy;
I cannot eat anything with any gluten in it from the other three grains. I
react to all them as well as milk (both the lactose and the protein). The
only difference seems to be that my reactions are not as violent as the
worst of the people on the list (but more so than many of the milder
reacting ones) and that when I have a gluten accident I theoretically do
not damage the villi in my small intestine so I'm not heir to the many
problems celiacs get from malabsorption -- though I"ve never checked it.

Yet my GI doc, who comes highly recommended from the Seattle Gluten
Intolerance Group, tells me from a days testing that I have less than a 2
percent chance of being a celiac. When I asked him, since I'd have to eat
gluten free anyway, if it were imperative that I get the biopsy done, he
said: Not unless you specifically wish to help me with my son's tuition to
Harvard :)

Since I am also Irish from whence a majority of celiacs spring, as far as I
can determine from the figures I've seen -- that I and others like me are
just genetically incomplete celiacs? Just wondering. -vance