Washington, December 2 (RHC) -- The professor emeritus of international relations at the State University of New York (SUNY), Eloise Linger, said that it is time for the United States to take the courageous and humanitarian step of normalizing relations with Cuba.

That opinion by the prominent New York intellectual was published in The New York Times, in response to the editorial "A Cuban Brain Drain, Courtesy of the U.S.", posted on November 16th.

Linger's letter to The New York Times describes Washington's program to lure Cuban doctors to the United States, known as the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, as an archaic resource from the Cold War.

"That program entices medical personnel desperately needed in the developing world to defect while working overseas and provides taxpayers' money to help them establish new lives in the United States," Linger noted in her letter to The New York Times.

The university professor pointed out that "most of the world has tremendous respect for the Cuban medical teams, challenging death and epidemics in the worst of conditions. Immediately after the October 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, 1,000 Cuban doctors responded. In the same spirit, Cuba responded after Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake.  "Cuba sent 1,200 people in medical teams, who were credited with treating about 40 percent of all cholera patients.”

"Similarly, Cuban medical teams are working today in the midst of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa," Linger noted. "An island country of 11 million people, Cuba has 75,000 doctors. One-third of them, along with 10,000 other health workers, are providing health care in the very poorest countries," she stressed.

"We in the United States should be deeply embarrassed that there were 188 votes at the 2014 United Nations General Assembly against continuing our embargo against Cuba, and only two votes in favor."