Why then do we not have a pill of lithium that's prescribed for Alzheimer's patients? We've heard of Aricept and Namenda, but where is Lithium? Amazingly, it turns out that drug companies do not want to spend millions of dollars researching and investigating how to make lithium into an Alzheimer's drug because there's no profit in it. No one owns a patent for lithium. It is a very simple element and freely available to anyone. So if Pfizer or Merck spent millions of dollars researching and proving lithium's effectiveness for treating Alzheimer's, anybody can turn around and sell it.
So who will lead this research effort? Sadly, it seems the drug companies will not.