In reference to Latif Kamaluddin's letter titled [#1] Let's just concentrate on Anwar - ignore the trivialities[/#] (April 20), I feel he couldn't be more wrong about excusing the Health Minister's mistake. It surely cannot be an "innocent oversight" when a senior government official slanders someone in Parliament, nor can we forgive it as simply not doing their homework if he does not retract his statements in public and apologise. Whatever the case the damage is already done on the image of our health ministry.

Also, I think the writer is misled when he thinks that Dr Thomas Hoogland only has one co-authored article to his name. He has 22 on Medline alone, and probably many more abstracts. A useful link would be to [#2] PubMed [/#] run by the National Institutes of Health which contains the world's largest central archive of medical journals.

However I do agree with the writer that the debate should be on Anwar and not on a doctor's credentials. Nonetheless, this careless accusation opens up a whole new can of worms with regard to how informed the Health Ministry is to modern developments.