Latest news with #MichaelBarry
Irish Independent
07-05-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Independent
Community rallies to help young Leitrim boy (8) with rare disorder pursue his farming dream
Michael Barry (8) is the son of Cllr Brendan Barry and Nicola and a brother to Shauna. The family live In Drumshanbo, Co Leitrim. Michael was born with a very rare condition: Genetic deletion Contiguous XP21 deletion syndrome. The condition leads to the co-occurrence of several related genetic disorders, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), congenital adrenal hypoplasia (CAH), and glycerol kinase deficiency (GKD). Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a terminal muscle wasting condition which causes a progressive loss of muscle in every organ and part of the body and usually impacts boys. Michael has never walked unaided and is a wheelchair user. Despite his challenges, the young man has a love of farming and spending his days on the land and watching the cows. However, the family farm is not accessible by car. To combat this, a GoFundMe page has been launched to purchase an all terrain vehicle, such as a quad, with an enclosed cab. The vehicle would allow Michael to roam to fields and yard safely. The vehicle will cost approximately between €15,000 and €20,000. So far, almost €25,000 has been raised by the fundraiser. The fund has been further bolstered as a local family donated money towards helping Michael in memory of their son and brother Ronan Moran, who was friends with Michael. Last year, €2,000 was raised for Michael in conjunction with Allen Gaels GAA who were raising funds for local groups and people with the inaugural 'Shroomsday event'. The Barry family are incredibly grateful for the support and donations they have received from the local community. The GoFundMe page explains, 'Michael is a typical boy when it comes to wanting to be out and about and on the farm. 'It is not possible to get a car around our farm. In the vehicle, he would have his own seat and be strapped in while being protected from the elements. 'With €2,000 being donated to Michael from the Shroomsday event, Allen Gaels have again offered to donate funds from a 25 card drive to Michael. 'We plan to spend this on the purchase of an all terrain vehicle like a quad with enclosed cab which would be much safer and drier for Michael to be able to go farming and see the cows. 'It will cost approximately between €15,000 and €20,000. 'We are setting up this go fund me if others would like to help with this purchase or other things to help Michael enjoy life to his full potential,' reads the fundraiser. To donate to the fundraiser, visit the GoFundMe page here.
Irish Examiner
30-04-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Sarah Harte: Our broken food culture is driving us towards weight loss drugs
Is the age of body positivity gone? The waif is back on the catwalk with millions embracing weight-suppressant drugs known as GLP-1 agonists. Hardly surprising that people turn to drugs to shrink themselves when weight bias is so heavily ingrained in society and being fat is so highly stigmatised. It's baked into our psyches that it's better to be thin, and when you fall short of this mark, it can be a source of intense shame. This is true for all genders, although it's particularly pernicious for females, such is our cultural bombardment from birth about the necessity of being thin. What makes people overweight or in some cases obese is complex and varied, with drivers including disordered eating, genetics, a dysregulated part of the brain priming a person to overeat, socioeconomic factors including poverty and lack of education around and access to healthy food. However, the elephant in the room is that a broken food culture has much to answer for. Societally, we have allowed transnational companies to aggressively market ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which have displaced healthy diets globally. Scientists have long warned that these foods are driving 'the pandemic of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes.' Instead of tackling the source of the problem, we are turning to biochemical engineering to solve obesity. These 'miracle' weight loss drugs mimic the action of a natural hormone, promoting the feeling of being full. No day is complete without somebody famous or otherwise posting snaps on social media of their reduced girth. Good luck to them. Yet, what is the cost of all of this, and how should the State respond? As reported in this newspaper on Friday, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) conference discussed last week how the Irish State's medicines bill could double if we funded weight loss drugs for all those who need or, in some cases, want them. There are over one million obese people in Ireland. Weight loss injections Wegovy (the brand name for a GLP-1-based medicine called semaglutide) and Mounjaro (the brand name for tripeptide) are currently being assessed for reimbursement under State schemes. Apparently, we have over one million obese people in Ireland who are potentially eligible for the drugs. Professor Michael Barry, clinical director of The National Centre for Pharmaoeconomics, posed a valuable public health question (somewhat ironically saying that big decisions had to be made): 'Do we fund them [the drugs] or fund them only for a subgroup of people?' Utilitarian policy decisions made by people like Professor Barry must balance the array of needs of the citizenry. Who gets what drugs, weighing the efficacy versus the financial cost to the State? Another question I have is: If we overfund these drugs, what resources might be diverted from other essential health areas? There are other considerations quite apart from cost. Two people I know are currently losing weight. One uses weight loss medications and seems very optimistic about her journey. The other is losing weight through the time-honoured method of exercise and pushing back from the table because she is dubious about the possible long-term effects of weight-loss drugs. Maybe she is right to be. Side effects As these drugs are relatively new, the potential adverse side effects in the wider population are still being studied. So far, it appears that patients ultimately have to remain permanently on medication to avoid weight regain. Lean body tissue, meaning muscle mass and bone, is also lost. Common side effects include vomiting, diarrhoea, and constipation, with some reports of hair loss. Where they are abused, more dangerous side effects occur, like inflammation of the pancreas. There are legal actions currently under way in the USA about the side effects, including gastrointestinal injuries. It will be interesting to see where liability will lie, whether it will be with the drug manufacturers, healthcare professionals who prescribe them, etc. Earlier this month, the Trump Administration announced that Medicare and Medicaid will not cover anti-obesity drugs, which the Biden Administration had planned to do. More than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries are classified as obese. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy has criticised the drugs. Do we want to be on team Trump and Kennedy (a conjunction which once seemed impossible)? No, we don't. We should consider funding these drugs for a limited subgroup of obese people. The old-fashioned method often doesn't work, and we have the statistics to prove it This public health crisis is a global problem. A recently published Global Burden of Disease Collaborators on Obesity report shows that rates of overweight and obesity increased at the global and regional levels, and in all nations, between 1990 and 2021. Strikingly, in that period, the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents doubled, with obesity alone tripling. In terms of our response, surely banning ultra-processed foods high in salt, fat and sugar or at least curtailing food companies' ability to advertise them must be part of the equation, particularly where children are concerned. Some years ago, one Southern Mexican State implemented a ban on selling fizzy drinks and sweets to children. Deeply unpopular, the ban was never enforced. Coca-Cola is the most popular soft drink in the world and, for the last twenty years, the biggest-selling brand in the Irish soft drinks market. One 12-oz can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar, which equals 10 teaspoons. I'm never madly keen on being part of the fun police. My default position tends to be 'you do you,' and whatever gets you there is your own business, provided it doesn't involve minors and doesn't hurt anyone. But this does involve minors, rapidly expanding ones with all the problems that weight gain brings. I wonder if we should consider banning soft drinks and sweets for children as a preventative measure rather than intervening later with drugs, and figuring out whether we will be able to afford weight loss drugs for the approximately one in five obese or overweight Irish children when they grow up? And where are the public education campaigns warning of the health hazards of fizzy drinks, cereals, ultra-processed foods, and fast meals, as we had with tobacco? Consider the following as an example of the profound ignorance of the current approach. In the month that the HSE's National Clinical Lead for obesity, Donal O'Shea, voiced concerns about the inclusion of ultra-processed foods in school meals for which 475,000 children are eligible, Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary responded that products high in fat, salt, and sugar would be removed from meals. Then, in the same month, at the IMO conference, it was debated how many adults we could subsidise for weight-loss drugs. Weight loss drugs are a revolutionary development that can improve human health as part of a suite of measures. Our clear focus, though, should be on the primary prevention of excessive weight gain, which includes reining in companies that produce UPFs rather than intervention through creating a culture of drug dependency for weight loss. The question is how we intelligently prevent the onset of obesity and diet-related diseases, particularly in children. We owe it to them at least to try.
Irish Examiner
28-04-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Irish Examiner view: Ireland at a crossroads over pharma
We should be grateful for some straight talking from one of Ireland's leading experts in the supply of drug remedies. After the disappointment over the ill-planned introduction of what really should have been a piece of good news — the welcome, if long overdue, provision of HRT — a warning is being sounded about the availability and affordability of other drugs. Michael Barry, the clinical director of the National Centre of Pharmacoeconomics and head of department at Trinity College, is the man to do just that. Speaking at the Irish Medical Organisation's annual meeting in Killarney, Prof Barry pointed to what could be the 'next big thing' in healthcare, weight-controlling and weight-reducing drugs. Ireland has one of the highest obesity rates in Europe and some estimates indicate that 1m people have a BMI of 30 or over. If the treatment was granted to everyone who might be eligible, the State's constantly increasing drugs budget, already standing at €4bn, would more than double to €10bn. Two drugs, Mounjaro and Wegovy, which are delivered through self-injectable pens, are under assessment for weight loss and other benefits including treatment of some forms of diabetes. Wegovy is made by the Danish manufacturer Novo Nordisk, who also produce another remedy, Ozempic. Mounjaro is a product of the American pharma giant, Eli Lilly, which has plants in Ireland. Patients and customers, as with the debate over HRT, will have their experience and expectations informed by what is happening with our next-door neighbours. Both drugs are available on prescription in the UK, although their cost means that usage is tightly controlled. Depending on dosage, a month's supply of Mounjaro can cost the NHS nearly €150, while Wegovy can range from €85 to €205. It's obvious, as Prof Barry states, that 'some difficult decisions' are required and that this thinking, with its potential impact on future budgets, has to be carried out quickly. The debate comes at a tricky time for relationships among government, suppliers, and practitioners. The manner in which politicians mismanaged the introduction of HRT, falling out simultaneously with pharmacists and voters, was the equivalent of missing an open goal in the advantageous management of public opinion. Woe betide the Department of Health if the new deadline of June 1 is not met. There is acrimony, too, about the delayed arrival of new cancer drugs into the Irish market. While some critics blame the launch timetables of pharmaceutical companies, others point to a lack of evidence that patient survival rates and quality of life are improved. With the HSE operating 'very close' to budget expansion limits, it is unsurprising that caution is being exercised. A final complicating factor has its foundations. Major companies have warned the European Commission that they may divert up to €100bn of planned investment to the US and they feel rising irritation from concerted attempts by Brussels to liberalise intellectual property rights. They are further chafing at EU requirements such as being forced to conduct multi-country clinical trials for drugs. The US is the largest market by sales for big pharma companies. EU medical and pharmaceutical product exports to the US totalled about €90bn in 2023, according to Eurostat. In all manners of ways, this is a relationship at a crossroads. Moment in time Staged or not, the photograph of US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy facing each other knee to knee in the marble halls of a Vatican basilica, will be one of the enduring images of modern history, up there with those black and white stills from Munich in 1938. In an eerily prescient cartoon on that same morning, Irish Examiner cartoonist Harry Burton showed an isolated Zelenskyy clutching a prayer card while being handed a document entitled 'US Peace Plan'. A speech bubble simply said: 'Sorry for your loss.' Mr Trump, it must be noted for the future, has no great record of standing up to bullies or dictators, whatever belligerence he has displayed towards minor groups such as the Houthis. For the avoidance of doubt, it was he who signalled the frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan ahead of even Joe Biden, signing off on a 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw US forces. When it comes to security and alliances, he is the worst president of modern times, a blusterer whose blowhard approach will have been duly noted by China, North Korea, by his opponent in the Kremlin, and by Iran. Nato has to draw, and act upon, the necessary conclusions for the defence of Europe. The Russians will be keeping Crimea, says Mr Trump. Of course they will. The time to have stopped that would have been 2014. They are likely, also, to keep the land they have invaded. The question now is how to recognise, and ensure, what Mr Zelenskyy said he wanted this weekend: 'Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out.' Pope Francis once urged Ukraine to show the 'courage' of the 'white flag'. It's a phrase which may be heard more. Not over yet for Liverpool One of the great attractions of sport is that it always provides scope for a counter argument. Thus, yesterday's Premier League triumph by Liverpool, who have turned this season's competition into a procession, allows their many supporters to lay the ghost of an Alex Ferguson insult which has rankled for nearly three decades. My job, said the Manchester United manager, was to 'knock Liverpool off their fucking perch'. And in taking them to 20 top titles, overhauling the Merseysiders who were stuck on 18 since 1989/90, he did just that. After yesterday Liverpool have drawn level. They are equal, but not ahead. It's not over yet. Honours even does not cut it.
Irish Times
26-04-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Is my house plant a menace to society?
I was gifted this house plant, a 'mother of thousands', and I am quite fond of it. However, I read online that these are illegal in some part of the world due to the risk they may pose to ecosystems. Is it dangerous to keep one here in Ireland? Aidan O'Leary, Dublin Get a grip – it's not illegal to have one here. Nor is it dangerous, unless you or your pets take to eating it. Its Latin name is Kalanchoe daigremontianum, not Cannabis sativa. The plant is native to Madagascar and cannot survive outdoor temperatures below 12 degrees, so it is hardly likely to run rampant in the wild here just yet, no matter what you read about it doing in Australia. Sand martin colony. Photograph supplied by Stephen Meaney I take part in the Iwebs (Irish Wetlands Birds Survey) and count birds on Lough Cuilin in Co Mayo. A local woman, Eileen Bolger, sent me this photograph of a sand martin colony established on a dried turf face on a nearby bog. We both subsequently visited the site on April 9th and saw what looks like a well-established colony with at least 25 birds and using the holes as nest sites. Stephen Meaney Sand martins are so called because they excavate their nesting tunnels in sandy riverbanks, eroded sand dune cliffs, or sand and gravel quarries. And in Ireland they have been known to use the old, dried faces of turf banks as they can excavate this material. This fact encouraged Clogher environmental group, with assistance from collaborators, to establish an artificial sand martin wall on Clogher Bog near Castlebar, which was launched last year during Heritage Week. Sand martins have declined so much due to habitat loss and a decline in the insect population that they are now on the amber list of birds of moderate conservation concern. They need all the help they can get. READ MORE [ Why is this bug causing a big stink? Opens in new window ] Sand mason. Photograph supplied by Michael Barry These can be seen at low tide on Dooneen Beach in Cork. Do you know what they are? Michael Barry These are sand masons – marine worms that live inside a tube built of large sand grains. The top has a frayed appearance also made of sand, which helps to protect the delicate and sticky tentacles that wave about in the water when covered by the tide, trapping tiny food particles there. They live on the lower shore as they need to be covered by water most of the time. Peacock butterfly. Photograph supplied by June Hurley This beautiful butterfly was sunbathing in my garden on March 19th. Every so often it closed its wings. Is it a little early for butterflies? June Hurley, Killiney, Co Dublin This is peacock butterfly, which overwinters as an adult. Accordingly, it wakes up on any warm spring day that comes and typically is on the wing from March to June. It feeds on the nectar of dandelions and hawthorn to give it energy to mate and lay eggs on the common nettle, its larval food plant. The next generation fly from mid-July and overwinter from September. [ Drink to your elf: what is this striking red growth? Opens in new window ] Dead frog. Photograph supplied by Hilary and Finnian Cullinan We spotted this dead frog in a pool near Ben Bulben. We were looking at the different lots of frogspawn and then spotted her. Finnian (6½) said she probably died from exhaustion after laying so many eggs. Is he right? Hilary and Finnian Cullinan, Sligo Kind of right. Sometimes several males try to mate with a single female at the same time and the weight of all of them on top of her can cause her to drown. Female eggs are fertilised in the water – the act of mating causing them to be ejected from the female, which typically can live up to 12 years. Please submit your nature query, observation, or photo, with a location, via or by email to weekend@
Irish Examiner
25-04-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Prescribing 'King Kong' of weight-loss pills could see drugs budget jump to €10bn
The State's drugs budget could more than double to €10bn if a treatment known as the 'King Kong' of weight-loss drugs is approved for everyone eligible, a doctors' conference has heard. Some 'difficult decisions' are needed about the rising costs of all new drugs as soon as next year, clinical director of the National Centre of Pharmacoeconomics Professor Michael Barry warned. The drugs budget has been rising for the last decade, Prof Barry said. 'I think our drugs budget is at €4bn. I got it wrong in the past, I thought it would be €4bn by 2027, it won't, it's here today,' he said. He agreed with an estimate of one million people being eligible for these drugs, a figure raised by obesity expert Professor Donal O'Shea. This is based on them having a BMI of over 30. 'That would in effect add €6bn to the drugs budget, which would then take it to €10m,' he said. 'It's unaffordable, it's not going to happen, and I don't see it happening in my opinion,' Prof Barry said. The HSE is 'very close' to budget expansion limits, he told doctors at the Irish Medical Organisation's AGM in Killarney. Two drugs — Mounjaro and Wegovy — are under assessment for weight-loss and other benefits. However, he raised concerns about the potential impacts of increased spending. 'I anticipate that the assessment will be complete by the end of the year or the start of next year by the latest, then that is when the decision-making will need to be made,' he said. The question is 'do we fund them?' or 'do we fund them only for a sub-group of people who could benefit from them?' so it depends, they will be big decisions. Prof Barry also hit out at claims by pharma companies the HSE is to blame for delays bringing new cancer drugs to patients. 'Do [the companies] launch the product in Ireland first? Of course they don't. They go where the money is, the big markets — Germany, France, Italy, Spain,' he said. 'The HSE has nothing to do with this. The launching strategy of the pharmaceutical industry is up to themselves, that's why we've delays in access to medicines in this country.' He urged: 'All I'm asking for is an honest debate about this. It's always portrayed, in any article I read, there's a delay of up to two years and it's the HSE's fault. 'What I said today, clearly is it's not. I have no problem defending this — these are high-cost drugs and we should be asking about the value for money before we pay tax-payers' money. 'I think people need to be honest, and acknowledge a significant amount of the delay is down to the company themselves.' Read More Community drug projects welcome Government funding of €1.9m for addiction treatment services
