There seems to be a notion that everybody's body is the same.
Yes and this is not uncommon. I've seen it in every diet and heatlh forum I've perused that had a substantial number of posts. Many people who experience a dramatic rejuvenation after changing a certain variable like diet quickly become convinced that the same formula will help everyone and develop an urge to save the world by proseletyzing it.
One man's meat truly is another's poison. An Ayurvedic physician that I know told me of one girl he treated that needed (the healing effect of) ghee so badly for a chronic issue she had that she could down a cup or more of ghee at one sitting. I love ghee and butter dearly, but I'd be making long distance calls on the big porcelain telephone if I had that much. 
Yes, to further prove that point, when I consumed about a 1/3 cup of warmed ghee once it didn't loosen my bowels in the slightest but it did give me stomach gas with belching, nausea, headache, full-body malaise, mental fog, restless sleep and a nightmare that woke me up around 4 am. In contrast, I can eat 2 or 3 cups of raw 100% grassfed suet with nothing more than a few mild burps and large amounts of raw supermarket marrow with no negative symptoms at all (though I don't care for the taste of supermarket marrow--but I add spice to make it palatable for me). As a matter of fact, the more grassfed suet I eat the better I feel--which is the opposite of my experience with ghee.
Milk is like every other food...
That goes further than I would. I don't think that every food is equal, but I accept that your reports that you handle milk well.
To me this is supposed to be a forum like the old Roman public meeting place where discussion is backed up with facts as you said.
That's pretty rare in Internet forums. They are generally more dominated by speculative opinions, extrapolations and emotion. I'll bet that speculation and emotion existed even in the Roman senate. Speculation has its place, but I agree that ideally it shouldn't dominate.
.... I've had periods of consuming the highest quality butter, milk, yoghurt, cream available (organic, grass-fed, A2, home kefir'd etc). I still have issues with it myself. I can get away with the odd piece of unpasteurised goat or ewe cheese but it's generally not worth the bother. However, my recent reintroduction of raw, grass-fed jersey butter seems not to have caused any problems. Of course, it's sometimes difficult if not impossible to recognise problems until they become major issues but it feels ok to me so far.
.... I'm still open-minded about the possibilities of dairy products as part of a human diet under certain circumstances. Of course, it's not paleo but any attempt at pure emulation of our perceived view of such is always going to be futile. ....
I see taking into consideration what was eaten going back millions of years in the past not as necessarily blind emulation, but instead it can mean just taking advantage of useful clues from evolutionary biology and not casually dismissing millions of years of human and hominid experience.
I accept the claims of dairy proponents that they handle it well, but it's interesting that you, Tyler and me all have issues with most or all forms of dairy, even the ones that dairy-eating Paleo and Primal dieters advocate. I want to believe them that the dairy will only be beneficial for me, it would add another source of fat I could eat, but I unfortunately don't find that to be true in my case, for whatever reasons. That some dairy advocates apparently then accuse people like us of not eating dairy or dairy fat just because of emulation doesn't seem scientific to me. It is true that some Paleo dieters appear to make the mistake of assuming that anything not eaten in the past must be really bad, so I can understand how someone could make the mistaken assumption that all Paleos who avoid dairy do so merely because of emulation. I see what our ancestors ate going back millions of years as an important clue, not an absolute guarantee that a food is poison. For that matter, I try to avoid positing absolutes in general.
There are a couple other interesting cases within the online dieting community to add to yours, Tyler's and mine. Paleo fitness expert Robb Wolf reported that his friend, Paleo diet advocate and former pro football player John Wellborne, was so adamantly pro-pastured-dairy that he almost came to blows with Loren Cordain over it. Yet, when John eventually tried eliminating dairy from his diet he experienced improvements like better lipid, blood glucose, and triglyceride numbers. Since John's improvements and similar reports from other Paleo dieters, and recent studies suggesting links between dairy and cancer, Robb Wolf said he "is getting more and more nervous about recommending [dairy], even [from] grassfed sources." (Source:
Robb Wolf Offers 'The Paleolithic Solution' To Obesity And Disease, Interview by Jimmy Moore of Livin' La Vida Low Carb)
Even raw grassfed milk can turn out to be a problem for people who thought they handled dairy fine. Matt Stone seems to be the popular diet guru of the moment. Here's Matt's raw "Milk Diet Fail" story:
"On the 26th day of the milk diet I started having some gastrointestinal issues. I woke up and fasted for most of the day on the 27th, bent over in pain and pooping every 30 minutes. By the end of the day, the last thing in the world I was wanting to do was drink more m'f'in milk. Boo to the Moo.
Couple this with the fact that I was in basically a hyperallergenic state and snotty as hell, and I was ready to mooove on. I was even snoring for the first time in a decade or so, and keeping Aurora up at night. I had to sleep on the couch by the end of the milk diet - or, more accurately, lying awake on the couch at night." (Source:
http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com/2010/06/milk-diet-fail.html)
So it's interesting, Michael, that multiple people who were well-disposed to including dairy in their diet, like you, Tyler, John Wellborne, some of Robb Wolf's clients, Matt Stone and me, have all had similar negative experiences with dairy and this shows that there is a grain of truth in what Tyler says about longtime dairy advocates later changing their tunes (but he unfortunately exaggerates the point).
The pro dairy claims just don't pan out for me, though I won't jump to the conclusion that Tyler seems to that dairy must be horribly evil for nearly everyone. I only suggest that people consider a period of dairy elimination like John Wellborne did before assuming they thrive on it. It won't kill people to go without dairy for 4 weeks or so and it makes sense based on at least the precautionary principle.
Like you, I haven't ruled out the possibility of including a little of some form of dairy in my diet in the future, but it just hasn't been a viable option for me up to this point. Also like you, I try not to get into debates with dairy advocates, because I've had bad experiences in the past with some rather zealous dairy advocates who went ballistic over any negative reports about dairy. Dairy, fruit and fatty cooked meats like pemmican seem to be akin to sacred manna for some people. Anything negative said about them seems to be regarded by them as sacrilege worthy of instant damnation and debates over those foods tend to be the most heated. Have you noticed that hardly anyone gets bent out of shape over broccoli, lean meats or fish?
