VANCOUVER — A British Columbia company has pledged to donate $1 million to a university researcher studying medical marijuana's potential for treating HIV-AIDS.
National Green Biomed Ltd., partly owned by former MP Herb Dhaliwal, is awaiting Health Canada's approval of an application to produce and sell cannabis.
University of B.C. assistant professor of medicine M.J. Milloy says the company has so far donated $200,000 toward his work, with a promise to contribute the rest of the money within five years.
Milloy was the lead investigator of an ongoing observational study that looked at the cases of 88 people infected with HIV and living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
He says their medical records suggested that people who smoked the most marijuana had significantly less of the virus in their blood compared to those who smoked less pot or none at all.
Milloy says the donation may be used to conduct a clinical trial to draw more firm conclusions than those available through the limited study published in Drug and Alcohol Review in March.
