Cognitive decline and dementia, principally Alzheimer’s disease, are looming, global disabilities carrying staggeringly high direct and indirect costs that are forecast to begin bankrupting health systems within the next few decades.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in 2021, about 6.2 million people aged 65 and above living in America were suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which is estimated to increase to around 13.8 million by 2060.

Since 2008, the U.S. NIH has invested about $13 billion in Alzheimer’s drug research. Additionally, private investment from 1995 to 2022 totals $42.5 billion. However, advances in drug discovery and clinical efficacy have been hobbled by unscrupulous basic scientists whose published papers in leading journals including Science, Cell, and Nature, focused many years of Alzheimer’s research on amyloid plaque, which is turning out to be the wrong target.

The huge negative consequences of this scientific malfeasance are now playing out in the controversies around Alzheimer’s drug approvals.

Meanwhile, Medical R&D investment in preventive care interventions for cognitive health has remained virtually nonexistent, and hearing impairment is now recognized as the largest risk factor for dementia, a settled scientific fact of significant value to Soundbites customers, as Soundbites is proven in rigorous clinical research to preserve and improve hearing.