A postmortem examination is to be carried out on Michael Jackson's body this afternoon amid growing speculation that the singer's long-term use of painkillers could have been a factor in his death last night.
Police officers were posted outside the Los Angeles county coroner's office this morning as preparations for the autopsy continued inside.
The singer's body was flown by helicopter to the coroner's office from the UCLA medical centre where he died last night of a cardiac arrest.
Jackson's brother Jermaine said that although the family was waiting for the results of the postmortem examination, a cardiac arrest seemed the most likely cause of death. "My brother, the legendary King of Pop, passed away on Thursday 25 June at 2.26pm," he said. "We believe he suffered a cardiac arrest at his home, however the cause of his death is unknown until the results of the autopsy are known. The personal physician who was with him at the time attempted to resuscitated him."
A spokesman for the UCLA medical centre said: "When he arrived at hospital at approximately 1.14pm a team of doctors including emergency physicians and cardiologists attempted to resuscitate him for a period of more than one hour. They were unsuccessful."
Police said they were investigating Jackson's death, which is standard procedure in high-profile cases.
Reports in the Sun suggested that Jackson may have collapsed after an injection of Demerol, a powerful painkiller that can in certain circumstances increase the risk of cardiac arrest. The singer became addicted to Demerol and morphine during his 2003 trial for child sex abuse.
"Shortly after taking the Demerol he started to experience slow shallow breathing," the newspaper quoted one source as saying. "His breathing gradually got slower and slower until it stopped."
Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre and sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s when he was music's greatest performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage. His 1982 album Thriller, which included the blockbuster hits Beat It, Billie Jean and Thriller, is still the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50m copies sold worldwide.
Brian Oxman, described as a Jackson family lawyer, also expressed concern over Jackson's use of drugs.
"This is not something that has been unexpected … because of the medications which Michael was under," Oxman told CNN. "I do not know the extent of the medications that he was taking but the reports we had been receiving in the family is that they were extensive."
He added: "When you warn people that this is what's going to happen and then it happens … Where there's smoke, there's fire."
The entertainer had planned a series of 50 concerts at the O2 arena in London beginning on 12 July. Although in the last two decades his reputation was sullied by accusations of child molestation and his odd public behaviour, a million tickets were sold within hours, proving that he had enduring appeal, even among fans who were not yet born in his heyday.
Reports that he had been taken to hospital first broke on the celebrity website TMZ. The site reported that a call came in to emergency services at 12.21pm local time from Jackson's home in Holmby Hills. The website reported that his sister La Toya was seen running into the hospital sobbing.
As news of his death spread hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. MTV switched its programming to play Jackson's music videos, while radio stations across America began playing marathons of his hits. At the Glastonbury festival, the news that Jackson had died spread across the site in minutes.
Jackson's close friend Uri Geller said it may have been the stress of the London comeback that killed the singer.
Speaking from his home in Sonning, Berkshire, he said: "I guess the stress, the anticipation and the passion he was emitting from his heart, wanting to do this comeback so badly, maybe that got to him. That is all I can think, that maybe the stress killed him."
Concerns were raised for Jackson's health last month when four of his This Is It concert dates were pushed back, but organisers insisted the dates were moved due to the sheer magnitude of the spectacle. Randy Phillips, president and chief executive officer of AEG Live, said the date changes had "absolutely nothing to do with [Jackson's] health".
Jackson's impact on American pop music cannot be overstated. His signature vocal style, dance moves and military-inspired fashion sense influenced pop culture worldwide. His Thriller video, which cost a then record $500,000 and featured a chorus line of lithe zombies, helped to launch the music video genre.
"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced the Thriller album. "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."
Over the course of his career, Jackson sold more than 750m albums worldwide and won 13 Grammy awards. But he had withdrawn from the public eye, taking his last tour in 1997 and releasing his last album of new material in 2001.
The cost of his lavish lifestyle took a tremendous toll on his fortunes. In 2008 he was forced to give up the deeds to his Neverland ranch and in April this year he stopped at the last minute a public auction of belongings including jewel-encrusted concert tickets, stagewear and music memorabilia. He was, at the time, thought to be as much as $24m in debt.
Raised in the Motown tradition, Jackson's worldwide popularity broke racial barriers. The Reverend Al Sharpton, a leading US civil rights campaigner and friend of Jackson for 35 years, said the star was a "trailblazer" and a "historic figure".
"Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of colour way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama," he said. "Michael did with music what they did in sports, in politics, and in television. No controversy will erase the historic impact."
Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, a gritty industrial city near Chicago. He became renowned in the 1970s as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, astonishing audiences with his charming looks, his crisp playful voice and his smooth dance moves. He broke through as a solo artist in 1979 with Off the Wall.
In 1993 Jackson was first accused of child molestation by a 13-year-old boy and his father. Authorities searched his ranch and Jackson agreed to a strip search. The case was eventually settled out of court and Jackson was never charged.
In 2003 he was the subject of a documentary by the British filmmaker Martin Bashir in which he admitted to sleeping in the same room as children at his ranch. Prosecutors had been investigating him for years and, soon after, he faced new charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor. In 2005 a jury acquitted him.
Jackson married twice, the first time to Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley, in a union of pop music dynasties. He later married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr, known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.
Jackson had a third child, Prince Michael II. Now 7, Jackson said the boy, nicknamed Blanket as a baby, was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.
In recent years he was frequently seen in public wearing a mask, along with his children. In 2002 he was seen dangling Prince Michael II from the balcony of a hotel room while legions of photographers watched in horror below.
Jackson said he suffered from vitiligo, a condition that causes the skin to lose its pigment. In May the Sun newspaper reported he had been diagnosed with skin cancer, a rumour he denied.
He had been engineering a comeback tour in an effort to rehabilitate his public image and bolster his tottering finances. The warp-speed sales of the tickets to his O2 shows indicated that despite the scandals and the absence of new hits, he was still beloved by his fans.
source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
Doctors confirm pop star was taking medications
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