Ok, here it goes again.

I refer to the letter by Shimania Fantasi in which he/she says that ' ... the microscopic spinal endoscopy surgery which Anwar Ibrahim requires is not available here. What will be done in AlphaKlinik in Munich, Germany cannot be plagiarised here yet, sorry to say ...'

If I may comment, the arguments for Anwar Ibrahim's travel to Munich for his surgery are becoming more ridiculous, emotional and childish as time goes on, and I shall not write on this topic again.

Micro-endoscopic spinal surgery is done in Malaysia, but not in huge numbers so far. A colleague who does this in private practice tells me that he has just done his 25th case, after training overseas in Europe (at his own expense) specifically for this procedure.

He also tells me that he would not offer this to Anwar Ibrahim. In his opinion, Anwar needs open decompression, not endoscopic surgery. There is very little or no risk from the former, and the histrionic suggestion of having clauses for the cabinet to take public oaths as to his recovery from surgery are infantile.

Let us have some respect for the medical profession here, or else take all our illnesses overseas.

Saying that the local open surgery offered is rudimentary would shock spinal surgeons throughout the world, who perform hundreds of thousands of such rudimentary operations annually, including in Germany.

Please remember that endoscopic surgery is just a new (and admittedly smaller) hammer to bang in the same nail. Occasionally a larger hammer is safer and quicker, and it has been used for tens of years without harm.

New medical techniques that work spread across borders, and are not considered to have been 'plagiarised'. This is how all scientific knowledge expands.

Enough already!