What makes a best-selling crime novelist like Patricia Cornwell, who has no clear ties to the medical marijuana movement and no history of marijuana activism, give $500,000 to fund a marijuana research study? It’s a one-word answer: love. She’s been married to the study’s lead researcher, Dr. Staci Gruber, since 2005.
Gruber announced in a press release on Monday that Cornwell’s gift will fund the new Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery (MIND) program. Harvard Magazine published a story about the new study that provided more insight.
“Most studies on medical marijuana to date have focused on its efficacy, or on patients’ symptoms. MIND head researcher Staci A. Gruber … hopes that the new initiative, the first of its kind, will begin to answer questions about whether medical marijuana affects cognitive function, positively or negatively – and why – by gathering empirical data about change over time within patients.”
