How a Miracle Cure for Celiac Disease Backfired

This article is misleading and to a large extent completely wrong about Dr. Haas' positions regarding gluten and other carbohydrates. Dr. Haas´ research led to the creation of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet - which forbids any grains and starch at all. It is a scientific diet used to treat ulcerative colitis, Crone's, Cystic Fibrosis, Celiac and other auto-immune and gastric disorders. He is one of the important contributors to our understanding of how food and the bodies processing of food contributes to the functioning of our bodies, including the brain. The author writes from a simplistic point of view better used to describe a baseball game. He does not understand the nature of the scientific process and how scientific knowledge is accumulated. Science is not a competition. Each scientist adds a little and knowledge builds. This is a very unfair article to all the scientists mentioned and to the continued understanding of the cellular biology of food´s interaction with our bodies. The tone of the article itself, as prefaced by the headline, is sensationalist and at heart mean. The writer clearly doesn't care about the truth of the subject at all.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is intended to remodel the community of flora and fauna in the gut by essentially feeding them by modifying what we eat in order to create a healthier gut microbiome. It is sad that this article ignores the re-emerging study of the human microbiome, which I feel is one of the most promising fields of study for all auto-immune mediation, and instead frames Dr. Haas' research as sort of a wacky fad diet. Dr. Haas was regarded as the world's foremost celiac expert.

This article is misleading and to a large extent completely wrong about Dr. Haas' positions regarding gluten and other carbohydrates. Dr. Haas´ research led to the creation of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet - which forbids any grains and starch at all. It is a scientific diet used to treat ulcerative colitis, Crone's, Cystic Fibrosis, Celiac and other auto-immune and gastric disorders. He is one of the important contributors to our understanding of how food and the bodies processing of food contributes to the functioning of our bodies, including the brain. The author writes from a simplistic point of view better used to describe a baseball game. He does not understand the nature of the scientific process and how scientific knowledge is accumulated. Science is not a competition. Each scientist adds a little and knowledge builds. This is a very unfair article to all the scientists mentioned and to the continued understanding of the cellular biology of food´s interaction with our bodies. The tone of the article itself, as prefaced by the headline, is sensationalist and at heart mean. The writer clearly doesn't care about the truth of the subject at all.

No one is sought to minimize or mischaracterize Dr. Haas' contributions to medicine. At the time, the banana diet was not an unreasonable treatment for celiac disease. The condition can be controlled with such a diet. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet was also an important contribution to medicine. However, with respect to bananas curing celiac disease, Dr. Haas was simply wrong. His diet did not cure the condition, as he strongly maintained. The gluten-free diet was, in fact, a superior treatment for celiac disease. The fact is that Dr. Haas continued to advocate his banana-based diet, and continued to claim that it was the only diet that could achieve "a cure which is permanent" for people with celiac disease.

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet is intended to remodel the community of flora and fauna in the gut by essentially feeding them by modifying what we eat in order to create a healthier gut microbiome. It is sad that this article ignores the re-emerging study of the human microbiome, which I feel is one of the most promising fields of study for all auto-immune mediation, and instead frames Dr. Haas' research as sort of a wacky fad diet. Dr. Haas was regarded as the world's foremost celiac expert.

This article does not address Dr. Haas' research in general. It focuses only on the fact that the banana diet was once seen as a cure for celiac disease. That was not true, as Dicke's research later showed. Even in the face of Dicke's claims to the contrary, Dr. Haas continued to suggest that with his diet “There is complete recovery with no relapses, no deaths, no crisis, no pulmonary involvement and no stunting of growth†after these patients were on the diet for at least a year. " Whatever merits Dr. Haas' diet may have, even for celiacs, these claims for total cure are not borne out by science.

Dr. Haas apparently ignored the basis of science...evidence and repeatability. He came up with something that had apparent effect, failed to pursue further research, and proceeded to trash a better solution that was found...at the cost of his patients. In the long run, that is the only metric that matters.