Sir, I would like to reply to L. Westcott's letter (BDJ 2006; 200: 125) No honours for dentists. I sympathise entirely with L. Westcott. I suppose the idea of not grading a BDS is not really to show any differentiation; you either pass or fail or get honours and sometimes distinctions. However it does seem rather senseless that you cannot get a place in medical school with a BDS, considering how closely related the subjects are, and the length of the courses for medicine and dentistry are the same. In my view the BDS degree should be 'honours' anyway, because of the five year period to do a bachelor's degree. In addition dental students have to pass each and every professional exam 1-5 in order to proceed; they cannot just scrape through with a pass or 3rd of 40%: the pass mark is 50 and above. There are a lot of courses such as Hygiene and Therapy converting to degree, BSc etc (three years); perhaps it is time the BDS degree is promoted to honours, masters or DDS like in the States and Canada. I get the feeling there could be smatterings of underlying political motives going on perhaps.