‘GPs are actually independent minded’ says doctor given €70k over two years
DR Harry Barry is a familiar face to many. As well as authoring several best-selling books on anxiety and depression, he’s a contributor to national newspapers, speaks frequently on drivetime radio and has been a guest on the Late Late Show.
But few will be aware that in the past two years Dr Barry has received almost €70,000 in payments from Lundbeck, one of the largest manufacturers of antidepressants.
Does that mean that he – or any other doctor who receives payments – is compromised in any way? Dr Barry thinks not.
‘I think GPs are being regarded here as almost eejits, do you know what I mean? In fact we’re actually quite independently minded,’ he said this week.
‘I can understand the concern over a linkage between pharmaceutical companies and doctors and I would be in agreement with that. I don’t have an issue with that,’ he continues.
‘But I think what bothers me a little bit is that everybody is jumping on antidepressants but, for example, a much bigger problem is things like statins, which are prescribed unbelievably often and in my opinion very unhealthily, and yet nobody does a big thing on statins.’
Dr Barry says it is important that he is being transparent rather than hiding his drug firm payments, as many do.
‘I could have chosen not to have my name out there and just hidden away in the undergrowth… Why should I be hiding something when I’m not actually bothered about it? I’m sure I’ll be pilloried for doing so, but maybe it’s more honest.’
The money Dr Barry receives from Lundbeck is related to travel and fees for his participation in a Lundbeck initiative called the THINC Task Force – a group of experts who have developed a diagnostic tool to measure cognition among those suffering from depression.
The initiative is not, Dr Barry says, in any way related to the promotion or marketing of any Lundbeck drug.
‘If this was something to do with marketing a drug then I would be very uncomfortable about it. It was not to do with that,’ he says.
‘I would have walked away if it was associated with a product.’
However, many will view Lundbeck’s sponsorship of the THINC initiative, which is accompanied by heavy branding online and at each event, as a marketing opportunity.
‘If Lundbeck use this as a marketing opportunity that’s not our affair,’ Dr Barry responds.
In 2013 and 2014 – before Irishbased firms began disclosing payments to doctors – Dr Barry spoke at Lundbeck-sponsored THINC events in Berlin, Mexico, Dublin and Shanghai.
In 2015 – the first year payments were made public – he travelled to Brazil and Seoul for these events. That year Dr Barry received fees of €20,000 from Lundbeck for this work and the firm paid travel, accommodation and other expenses of €15,000 on his behalf.
By the end of 2016, Dr Barry had received transfers of value from Lundbeck worth €67,536. Dr Barry says the declared payments cannot constitute a conflict because he has not worked as a GP since 2013 and does not prescribe much any more. He does not want to say how much, if anything, he may have received prior to 2015 and before 2013 when he was still actively working as a GP. ‘That’s going back quite a few years. I’m really not sure,’ he told the Irish Mail on Sunday before later declining to respond to additional email questions about the matter.
‘I have pulled out of full-time general practice so I’m actually only seeing people purely on a consultancy basis and I do very little prescribing,’ he says, adding that he now refers patients he treats with psychotherapy back to their own GPs if they need medication.
In response to queries from the MoS, Lundbeck’s Ireland manager Patrick Campion said the firm ‘adheres to the highest ethical standards and complies with all legal, transparency and disclosure requirements’.