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I am not a practitioner, so I have no idea if this is actually plausible, but it would seem absurd to me for an experimental, out-of-left-field treatment for Alzheimers, in a <10 person study, could be denied a control group on ethical grounds. There are tens if not hundreds of millions of Alzheimer's patients not receiving this potential treatment already.

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This. There is basically zero chance that an ethics review would see this as a case in which a control group is unethical. I have been through plenty of IRB processes.

Resource constraints are a much more plausible explanation - running the study with a control group would cost twice as much (in time as well as money). This is either a pilot to apply for funding to run a better-controlled trial, or it's just not scientifically serious. Both are very plausible, in my experience.

Thanks for the perspective, I have only done data analysis after the data is generated, and never have actually had to deal with an IRB directly for the design of a study.

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