My colleague Dr. Michael Clegg, who is foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, co-authored a great op-ed in the most recent edition of the journal Science. Here's a link to the free summary.

Clegg notes that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the two oldest scientific associations in the Western Hemisphere, the National Academy in the U.S. and the one in Cuba. Clegg traveled to Cuba in September, just before the hurricanes.

Clegg's co-author is his Cuban counterpart, Dr. Sergio Jorge Pastrana, the foreign secretary of the Academia de Ciencias in Cuba. Together, they talk about the many areas where Cuban and American Scientists would benefit from a relaxation in the restrictions on scientific exchange.

Restrictions on U.S.-Cuba scientific cooperation deprive both research communities of opportunities that could benefit our societies, as well as others in the hemisphere, particularly in the Caribbean. Cuba is scientifically proficient in disaster management and mitigation, vaccine production, and epidemiology. Cuban scientists could benefit from access to research facilities that are beyond the capabilities of any developing country, and the U.S. scientific community could benefit from high-quality science being done in Cuba. For example, Cuba typically sits in the path of hurricanes bound for the U.S. mainland that create great destruction, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina and again last month with Hurricane Ike. Cuban scientists and engineers have learned how to protect threatened populations and minimize damage. Despite the category 3 rating of Hurricane Ike when it struck Cuba, there was less loss of life after a 3-day pounding than that which occurred when it later struck Texas as a category 2 hurricane. Sharing knowledge in this area would benefit everybody.

Change is coming to the U.S.-Cuban relationship. The question is only in the pacing of that change. Either way, scientific exchange and the unofficial diplomacy that comes from it will be a critical piece of the infrastructure of success. The National Academy linkages that Dr. Clegg is part of is a good preliminary move, and follows in the spirit of U.S. scientific exchanges with the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. The reason these contacts are especially important is that scientists, with their preference for evidence and reason over ideology and rhetoric, can build the kind of relationships that official diplomacy needs to be successful over the long term.

Now is the time to increase those exchanges and make the institutional linkages durable.