> It's not like people suffering from celiac's disease and eating gluten fail to thrive in our society. They still reproduce and raise families, most people do.

> It's not like people suffering from celiac's disease and eating gluten fail to thrive in our society. They still reproduce and raise families, most people do. I think that's an interesting empirical question. The question is the degree to which their genes propagate vs people without celiac disease. There seems to be a generic component to celiac disease, so obviously the effect can't be strong enough to wipe out the disease (and also worth remembering that there may be positive effects of those genes), but does it actually affect their evolutionary fitness to some degree? (and I think you'd find many people with celiac disease would say that it makes it difficult for them to thrive, in a more everyday use of the term 'thrive')