AUTOPSY: MICHAEL JACKSON LAST HOURS. An entertainment program on British TV

Channel 5 of British TV says that their autopsy program about Michael Jackson shown on January 7, 2014 is not available online “for technical reasons”.

The real reason is the fact that they are going to repeat it on January 12 and 14 until which time they are not planning to make it available online.

THE ESTATE HAD THEIR SAY

I am happy to learn that the Estate of Michael Jackson tried to stop the show – on January 6, 2014 they published a statement saying they had sent a letter to the broadcaster and station owner expressing the Estate’s disgust and asking Channel 5 to show good taste and common decency:

Estate Request Cancelation of Autopsy Broadcast

Michael’s Jackson’s Estate has written a letter to UK broadcaster Channel 5, asking them not to air their programme ‘Michael Jackson’s Last Hours’, which is due to be aired tomorrow night, 7th Jan at 10pm.

Although it is not possible for the Estate to bring legal action to stop the broadcast of the program about the autopsy performed on Michael, the Executors want Michael’s fans to know that letters have been sent to the broadcaster and station owner expressing the Estate’s disgust at those who heartlessly work to profit from the most banal, salacious details of Michael’s death.

In part, the letter from John Branca and John McClain asks Channel 5 to show good taste and common decency by canceling Tuesday’s planned airing of Autopsy: Michael Jackson’s Last Hours. The letter also states: “Despite Channel 5’s cynical and disingenuous promotions claiming Autopsy ‘separates fact from fiction,’ it is nothing more than another sleazy tabloid program exploiting Michael’s tragic and untimely death…..Separating ‘fact from fiction,’ the Michael Jackson his friends and family knew was a loving father, a global entertainment icon and humanitarian devoted to making the world better. His children do not deserve to see their father’s death callously exploited out of greed because a new TV series desperately wants to attract viewers.”

The Executors share the fans hope that Channel 5 show the good judgment to cancel the broadcast of this distasteful program.

Source: MJ Estate & MJWN

http://www.mjworld.net/news/2014/01/06/estate-request-cancelation-of-autopsy-broadcast/

Channel 5 did air the program and thus showed that it doesn’t have good taste and common decency, but I am still happy that the Estate was so vocal and expressed their opinion in no uncertain terms.

The Anti-Defamation Legacy Law Advocates also made a comment to that effect:

• Great. Glad they stepped up to the plate and called this broadcast exactly what it is – “FOR PROFIT”

Now that the program was aired and will be even repeated let’s think over the situation we found ourselves in.

LET IT BE OUR TIME TO TALK

Making an entertainment New Year show out of an autopsy of MJ (or anyone at all) was a new low reached by the media at a moment we thought they had already hit the bottom. The idea to entertain the public by the autopsies of those whose relatives are still alive could come only to someone who is utterly cynical and has a twisted and most probably unhealthy mind.

But if we cannot stop the program we can make use of it. I mean we can take advantage of the situation to remind the public about the real circumstances of Michael’s death, about the kind of treatment Michael was given by both Murray and AEG and destroy the lies this UK channel is feeding to the public.

If they want their program so much let us turn it into our time to talk then.

However we haven’t seen it and exposing the authors’ lies on the basis of the program synopsis only is difficult and is not quite correct. To help the situation I tried to collect everything available on the Internet to give all of us an idea of what this program is like.

Below you will find the pile of information gathered. It is partially the reviews in the press as well as the impressions of fans or ordinary people who left their comments in the media, on fan forums and on the channel 5 website.

Let us start from the very beginning of it and see what the authors themselves say about their “show”.

THE AUTHORS ABOUT THEIR PRODUCT

This is what they said prior to the show:

“In the first of three hour-long documentaries, world-renowned forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd investigates the death of Michael Jackson, ‘The King of Pop’. He was the biggest-selling recording artist of all time, but when he suddenly died at just 50 years old, he left $400 million in debts and more questions than answers.

The evidence revealed by his autopsy shows a severely sick man. Jackson was plagued by complications from his many plastic surgeries, suffered from two rare skin conditions and was riddled with arthritis. His lungs were severely damaged, he had an enlarged prostate, and was still suffering the effects of a horrific accident that left him partially bald.

The most startling evidence, however, uncovers the bewildering number of drugs that were coursing through his veins, bearing witness to a number of addictions that had spiralled out of control. It was Jackson’s desperate battle against insomnia, however, that would ultimately cost him his life.”

http://www.channel5.com/shows/autopsy-michael-jacksons-last-hours/episodes/autopsy-michael-jacksons-last-hours

I found an excellent comment on the above:

• “They’re obviously not reading the same coroner’s report as the rest of us because I reiterate, the majority of what was found in Michael was put there by a DOCTOR.”

I agree. We are definitely not reading the same coroner’s report as the one we read finds that it was a homicide and therefore the patient was killed. Michael Jackson died not because “a number of addictions had spirally out of control” but because he was given by his doctor a huge amount of propofol that brought about an acute propofol intoxication aggravated by benzodiazepines also indiscriminately injected by the same doctor into the veins of his patient.

Moreover the autopsy report we read didn’t find Michael a “severely sick man”. On the contrary, the coroner found Michael healthier than an average 50 year-old which means that if it hadn’t been for this manslaughter case he could have lived to be a hundred.

Yes, Michael had to struggle with Lupus and Vitiligo all his life and sustained a number of horrific accidents that required a prolonged use of painkillers, but he overcame it all due to his willpower and determination and ended up living a very clean way of living which is manifested perfectly well by the state of his heart, coronary system and blood vessels free of cholesterol and also liver which was healthy and therefore not the liver of an addict.

So even if  Michael had a dependency on Demerol prescribed to him for legitimate reasons (in the late 80s/early 90s after the burn accident and in the 2000s after the Munich bridge fall), by the year 2009 he was clean of this or any other narcotic drugs as the healthy state of his liver testifies to.

This important idea was expressed by one Irish commentator who spoke both of the autopsy report and the travesty the programme-makers made out of it:

From Ireland… The official autopsy has already stated the scientific truth and anything sieved through afterward does not change this fact. MJ had an on/off dependency on prescription meds for genuine ailments – three of which you have basically already admitted to. Michael Jackson was NOT “drug addict”, (as AEG desperately parroted as a defence tactic throughout the trial).

A reminder: There is a big difference to having an on/off dependency on prescription meds.

The official autopsy, which showed MJ not only to be healthier than what is average for his age, but that his liver  (always a tell-tale sign of long-term drug abuse) was in good, “unremarkable” condition. You will NOT get that in a long-term drug abuser.

Most fans already knew that MJ also had a life-long lung issue, which was also discovered in the autopsy, but to which Michael had already long written about in his book, Moonwalker – Chapter 3, back in the latter 80’s. That, too, stayed with him for life. It was actually a form of pleurisy. However, it was [not] as severe as you sensationalise… But hey, it’s Michael Jackson, so anything goes, yea? Why do you people insist on continuing to argue with the official autopsy report? Why can’t you just stick to the facts and report them without sensational embellishment? Oh, forgot for a minute, it’s Michael Jackson.

Another fact to remind you of: the so-called “hoard” of prescription pills taken from the rented mansion were hardly used according to date of issue/expiry on the vials. That fact wasn’t reported at the time, and eventually took MJ fans to find that out for themselves before it was even mentioned in this trial. Again, ignorant people just keep letting these facts go right over their heads – Or don’t research deep enough behind the sensationalism. Many fans already knew of the above mentioned at least two years before it was revealed in the last trial.

Reminder:  Official autopsy results revealed a “healthier than average 50 year-old”, with good internal organs – which included the liver (always a tell-tale sign with of a typical, long-term “drug addict”- as some of you like to parrot) being in good shape. NO signs of drug addiction or of ever being a so-called “drug addict”.

After all is said and done, Michael Jackson, in a desperate attempt to attain what he deemed a *sleep* resorted to the use of propofol, and to be administered by a trusted doctor …A doctor who turned out to be incompetent and negligent.  He ignored the crucial /life or death monitoring process. [MJ] was simply abandoned by Murray in order to make miscellaneous phone calls…And for a fatal amount of time. He abandoned a propofol patient…A BIG no, no!!

Had Conrad Murray done the exact same thing even within a hospital setting – (abandoning a propofol patient) – he would have been fired, at the very least. Though MJ willingly continued to have propofol administered by a trusted doctor as a form of sleep therapy, it was this doctor’s actions and inactions that literally caused the physical death of Michael Jackson, NOT Michael Jackson.

Among the many good points made here the one that struck me is that if Murray had done exactly the same thing within a hospital setting and had also abandoned his patient to talk over the phone for some 50 minutes the result would have been the same, so in the long run whether the hospital or home setting, Michael’s death occurred due to Conrad Murray’s extreme negligence and not Propofol proper or the place where he administered it.

It was Murray who was the biggest risk factor and it was Michael’s huge problem that he was evidently not aware of it.

A MORBID SHOW

The article in the Daily Mirror gives us another insightful look at the Channel 5 product. If you see the photos accompanying the article you will realize that the word “horror” will be no exaggeration here.

Some of their photos are the well-known pictures of Michael Jackson’s room and closet, but some show the “world-renowned pathologist” with a knife in his hands and the synthetic cadaver half cut and open. If this was done “just for the fun of it” and is an instance of some people’s black humor I would prefer to refrain from comment if I may.

Dr. Richard Shepherd. Photo: Channel 5

After seeing the horror picture of a half-cut cadaver I went to Channel 5 site and suggested that the journalists who envisioned the TV autopsy idea should imagine their own deceased relatives in the same type of a program and the feelings they would experience at seeing the look-alike body of, for example, their deceased father being ripped open.

Has any of them every thought of Michael’s children, and that one day they may see this sight too? If you ask me this is what REAL child abuse is, as well as the unheard of abuse of human ethics and decency. And I don’t want this to happen to Michael Jackson’s children same as to the daughters of Anne Nicole Smith’s and Whitney Houston either!

Here is a comment from one of the program viewers to the same effect:

• How can you think it is “entertainment” to breach the sanctity of the mortuary! And you plan to invade more graves. Is nothing sacred? Is nothing beyond the greedy quest for feeding and making money off corpses? This is disgraceful. You objectify, disrespect and violate the human being! This is further bullying of a man bullied all his life and now you bully him in death. Shameful and disgusting. He has minor children. Too bad this wasn’t more carefully considered. His fans will take down your sponsors. You deserve worse.

Another viewer whose name is Brian also wanted to know if the people working at Channel 5 would want their future autopsy to be shown on TV. Though the caller spoke about Michael Jackson only and was not informed that this episode was the first in a series of three entertainment autopsies, the fury he poured on the Channel 5 employee made my day.

All of them are responsible what their people are doing and all of them should face the music for their actions. Here is Brian throwing the wrathful truth at Channel 5:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202673962121017

No need to talk about him being ‘disrespectful’ to Channel 5. If you see the Daily Mirror article with its beautiful pictures you will also be infuriated:

Dr. Shepherd is handling the synthetic cadaver. Photo: Channel 5

Channel 5’s new ‘Autopsy’ series shows ‘last hours of Michael Jackson’

Jan 07, 2014 21:08

By Danny Walker

In this series of three one-hour films, world-renowned forensic pathologist, Dr. Richard Shepherd will navigate through the bodies of three celebrities, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Anna Nicole Smith.

Starting tonight (Tuesday 7) with “The King of Pop Michael Jackson”, this new show is billed as a “fresh eyes, up close and personal and as if for the first time” look into his death.

Dr. Shepherd is cutting open the body. Photo: Channel 5

Jackson, was the biggest selling recording artist of all time, but when he suddenly died at just 50-years-old, he reportedly left $400 million in debts, and more questions than answers.

Dr. Shepherd says: “The fascinating thing about an autopsy is that if you know how to read it correctly, it doesn’t just tell you how a person died, it can tell you even more about how they lived.”

The evidence revealed by his autopsy shows a man who suffered. Plagued by complications from his many plastic surgeries, suffering from two rare skin conditions, riddled with arthritis and with his lungs severely damaged, and was still suffering the effects of a horrific accident that left him bald.

Guy Davies, Commissioning Editor Factual, Channel 5, added: “When each of these icons died it was global news, but the public version of their lives and deaths were largely built on rumour and conjecture.

“Our programmes use the hard medical facts of the actual autopsy findings – examined and interpreted by a world respected pathologist – and first-hand accounts by those who really knew them – to intelligently piece together these shocking stories, and reveal the reality behind their final, desperate hours.”

Dr Shepherd was forensic pathological expert for the Inquiry and Inquest into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Mr Dodi Al Fayed.

* Autopsy: The Last Hours Of Michael Jackson airs tonight, Tuesday 7 January on Channel 5 at 10pm, after Celebrity Big Brother
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/channel-5s-new-autopsy-series-2999100

As a true pathologist Dr. Shepherd finds some ‘fascination’ in the autopsy process. He says that autopsies are a way to find how a person died and how the person lived which in this context means whether he took drugs or not.

The general idea is true but only if the autopsy results are read correctly and the voiceover accompanying it tells the real story of how this or that drug found its way into the person’s system. However if the person died of mercury poisoning (for example) and a voiceover coyly suggests that the victim was “addicted” to it, this will create a slightly different picture as you can imagine.

THE BENZOS IN MJ’S SYSTEM

I am not shy to use the word poisoning after reading about Versed (Midazolam) given to Michael by Murray and busted all over Internet as a virtual killer of those unfortunate people to whom it was injected even in lesser quantities than those administered to Michael by Murray.

Poisoning is the only correct word here as besides the totally uncontrollable and negligent administration of propofol which was at least Michael’s preference as it gave him a surrogate of sleep, Murray was also feeding and injecting Michael with benzodiazepines including Lorazepam and the infamous Versed, both of which seem to me the reason why Michael was displaying all those widely-reported symptoms of health deterioration in the last weeks of his life.

The problem with those benzodiazepines was that Michael never wanted them and was very reluctant to take them even by Conrad Murray’s own account to the police.  As the Irish commentator already noted the pills of benzos found in the house were hardly used by Michael according to date of issue/expiry on the vials.

This table from the autopsy report makes it clear that out of all the benzo pills prescribed to MJ by Murray and Dr. Metzger he took one type of medication just once a week and the other two just once in three days. This method of taking pills hardly speaks to much enthusiasm on his part in respect of those medications:

Versed is not found in this table as it was injected by Murray. For those who haven’t heard about this nasty drug which was actually counter-indicated for Michael’s insomnia, here is a post about the complete shock of it while we have to proceed and look into the first media review about the Channel 5 program.

‘SEVERE SICKNESS’ IS A BIG LIE

The Channel 5 program was the first to tell a big lie which was then repeated by an article published by metro.co.uk.

The article also gives us a feel of how ‘tasteful’ the program is:

Autopsy: Michael Jackson’s Last Hours revealed how ill the star really was

Tuesday 7 Jan 2014 11:05 pm

Autopsy was an odd mix of whitewash and exposé (Picture: supplied)

TV review: Autopsy: Michael Jackson’s Last Hours (C5)

SHOULD there be such a thing as tastefully picking over the bones of a dead pop icon’s corpse, then Autopsy: Michael Jackson’s Last Hours (Channel 5) just about pulled it off. ‘There are celebrities on the mortuary slab,’ was the calling card of forensic pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd as he set about analysing Jacko’s autopsy report.

What emerged was an odd mixture of whitewash and exposé, Shepherd scotching the idea that Jackson whitened his skin – the autopsy findings supported the oft scoffed-at skin condition claims – while listing the alarming catalogue of ailments the King Of Pop had tried to keep from the public.

As he prepared for the much-hyped This Is It tour that hastened his demise, Jackson was fighting osteoarthritis, lupus and a dependency on a dizzying list of sleeping potions. And, just for good measure, he was sleeping with a catheter thanks to an enlarged prostate. That’s bad. No, that’s really bad.

Shepherd backed the jury who found Jackson’s physician, Dr Conrad Murray, guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But it was just a matter of time. Shepherd’s ultimate verdict on Jacko’s tortured body? ‘It’s a miracle that he lasted as long as he did.’

http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/07/autopsy-michael-jacksons-last-hours-revealed-how-ill-the-star-really-was-4253439/

The final sentence of this article explains the whole concept of the program.

It was made to convey to its viewers that Michael was severely sick, would not have lasted another week (even if Murray had not killed him) and it actually does not matter whether AEG mistreated him or not as he was a “basket case” anyway. This ruin of a man was doomed to die even without their involvement, so why create all the fuss? Don’t worry guys, be happy…. See the point of the program?

However the “severe sickness” concept is a very big lie as it is in absolute contradiction with the conclusions of the coroner.

At the two trials where the coroner Dr. Rogers testified he stated exactly the opposite. Michael was healthier than an average 50-year old man and was expected to live a normal lifespan.

The Daily Telegraph said:

A coroner’s official says Michael Jackson was mostly healthy, but the doctor charged in his death provided substandard care.

The ABC said:

A medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Michael Jackson testified on Tuesday that the pop singer was in good health. While Jackson may have bore scars from years of injections, nothing that would contribute to his death was visible, Dr. Christopher Rogers testified.
“I believe that he was healthier than the average person of his age,” Rogers said.
Rogers determined that the manner of death was homicide, and the cause of Jackson’s death was a lethal mix of sedatives, the most significant being the milky white hospital anesthetic propofol.
Dr. Rogers testified that Jackson seemed to be in better shape than most men his age.

At the wrongful death trial in 2013 Dr. Rogers reiterated his statement:

If not for his death by propofol, Jackson’s health appeared good enough for him to live a normal lifespan, Rogers testified. 

“There was no indication from the autopsy that there was anything anatomically wrong with him that would lead to premature death,” Rogers said.

He had no signs of being addicted to street drugs, such as needle marks or disease, he said.

“http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/07/showbiz/jackson-death-trial/

So the coroner says that there was nothing anatomically wrong with Michael that would have prevented him from living a full life-span. He was in good health and in a much better condition than an average 50-year old man and if it hadn’t been for the homicide he would have lived a long life. No sign of street drugs, no nothing…

And the pathologist in the British program says that it was a ‘miracle that he was still alive’. And what’s incredible is that his conclusion is made allegedly on the basis of the autopsy report though it fully contradicts the results stated there.

The explanation of this glaring contradiction is in the fact that even despite Murray’s medical experiments on Michael Jackson his vital organs still remained unaffected. His heart and coronary system were in an excellent condition. His blood vessels were clean of cholesterol which is extremely rare for a man of his age. His liver was in an “unremarkable” state as was noted before, and was therefore absolutely not the liver of an addict.

This means that the changes for the worse in Michael’s health noted in the last weeks of his life were not organic to his system and were reversible if only he had been given professional medical help and those concerts had been postponed.

And if AEG had then rescheduled the concerts making them twice a week at the most as Michael wanted, the world would be enjoying his shows now instead of discussing his autopsy report and looking in utter amazement at those who are arranging this obscene spectacle on his grave.

FACTUAL INACCURACIES IN THE PROGRAM

Some viewers noticed that the program was factually incorrect as compared with the autopsy report:

• This is the most offensive documentary I’ve ever seen. I had trouble passing the title, but when I did, I found that the information given were incorrect! It seems to be trashy TV material, which I felt was below your usual standard! To switch over and see his dead body on TV is disturbing and most certainly, horrific I cannot imagine how his family must feel. Not only is this invasive, but this is also highly offensive! I’m disgusted that this has made it to our television screens!!

• His autopsy did not reveal a “severely sick man” – on the contrary. In fact, the coroner testified under oath that he was in a good health for his age. He had some health issues, but far from how they dramatize it here. “Severely damaged lungs”? BS. He had some inflammation in his lungs but they weren’t “severely damaged”. “Riddled with arthritis”? He had some arthritis but many people do at this age yet they aren’t called “severely sick” for it. Same with the prostate. And don’t even get me started on their sensationalism on the drugs. Yet another trashy, sensationalized, disrespectful, misleading BS it seems.

• Michael was the victim of a homicide; there were no drugs in his system except those put there by his own personal physician. Michael had long standing physical problems which did NOT render him incapable of pulling off these shows. He was killed in his bedroom by a medical experiment conducted by his own doctor. You should reconsider NOT re-airing this episode and NOT making it available on demand. Don’t you understand the other nearly 1,000 comments demanding you cease and desist??

Charles Thomson on his Twitter account called the documentary extremely irresponsible and shoddy:

• That Channel 5 documentary on Michael Jackson was extremely irresponsible in several ways.
• First and foremost, it implied that there was weight to Conrad Murray’s claim Michael Jackson injected his own propofol.
• Jackson’s fingerprints were not found on any medical equipment in the room. There is no evidence in existence that he did any such thing.
• Medical experts said the amount on his system was so large, he would have been unconscious before he could even finish injecting it.
• The choice of interviewees was, if I’m being generous, misguided. James Desborough has published numerous fabricated stories about Jackson.
• Large swathes of Ian Halperin’s book on Michael Jackson have been completely debunked as demonstrably fictitious.
• The show’s presenter wrongly claimed that propofol induced sleep. It does not.
• And I’m surely not the only person who finds it a bit racist that they kept showing pictures of MJ’s brother, claiming it was him?
• Because all black people with afros look the same? Is that it? Idiots.

A valuable comment was left on the Channel 5 site by a doctor:

• Disrespectful, manipulative, gossip-mongering and inaccurate (one of your pictures of a young Mr. Jackson was actually one of his brothers). In short, a trashy new low for the media. Read all of the comments on this page. Surely it must be a record number of complaints about a programme. I will no longer support the businesses of your advertisers. Dr. Mark Anderson.

Another viewer sent a letter to Channel 5 and actually copied it to my email address to familiarize me with the program. Thank you, Denise, some of the details you mentioned are invaluable:

Dear Channel 5,

You should be ashamed of yourself for the disgusting programme on the 7 January 2014 titled “The Last Hours of Michael Jackson” which was as usual biased propaganda.

First and foremost you used actors trying to depict Michael Jackson and Conrad Murray the first thing that you overlooked was the actor depicting Michael Jackson was healthy when Michael died he was so thin that his hearbeat could be seen beneath his skin. Secondly you had no idea what was really taking place in his bedroom. Conrad Murray was depicted as caring, no, he was not.

You went against everything that had been shown as proof in two courts of law in America. You overlooked the fact that Michael had not had any natural sleep for 60 days that is what was causing the very strange behaviour at one of the rehearsals, not stimulants and it was one of the causes of his death.

You completely overlooked the fact that Michael had suffered chronic pain everyday of his life from being burnt and hurting his back but it was NOT the start of his decline. Michael produced endless hits and short films after Thriller – please get your facts right. Doctors had described Demerol for the pain but Michael had stopped his dependency on Demerol.

Demerol and Propofol only raised its ugly head because of the brutal treatment that Michael was receiving at the hands of the AEG bosses.

The programme was constantly depicting Michael as a drug addict again proper research was not done Demerol which is prescribed by doctors is a narcotic but it is NOT heroin.

Oh, so they likened Michael Jackson to a heroin addict?

This is something new in their arsenal.

NO TRACES OF DEMEROL 

Heroin and Demerol are both opiates and belong to the same class. Demerol is a synthetic, man-made opioid prescribed for medical use while Heroin is a non-medical opiate used solely for recreation purposes. Though belonging to the same class heroin is an illicit drug while Demerol is a legitimate medication commonly prescribed by doctors as a pain reliever.

Likening the illicit drug to a perfectly legitimate drug prescribed for treating a medical condition is like throwing into one pile a criminal who cuts the throat of his victim and a surgeon who cuts the body of a patient for surgery. Both use a knife and it is only the purpose of its use that’s different.

However the authors of the program pretend they don’t notice the difference and replace one thing with another thus trying to turn MJ into a picture of a classical “junkie” who is using drugs for recreation. However saying that is as wrong and unethical as likening a surgeon to a criminal.

But though Demerol and heroin belong to the same class any talk about it is all the more criminal as there were no traces of Demerol found in Michael’s system after his death, so all this speculation is simply irrelevant. The program was supposed to be based on the autopsy report and not on something which was simply not there!

The autopsy toxicology report said there were no traces of Demerol metabolites or any other opiates in Michael’s system – see the picture of it please and notice that N/D actually means not detected:

An excerpt from the autopsy report says that narcotics were ND (not detected)

And there were no traces of any substantial use of Demerol in Michael’s liver either. Normally if a person takes opiates for a long time and is a habitual user of it, it would have an effect on his liver. But the morphological study of Michael’s liver showed that it was in a normal state without any hepatocytes inclusions which are typical for long-term opiate taking. The autopsy said:

“The liver (slide Q) is normal in structure. Hepatocytes show no inclusion or lipid droplets. There is no significant parenchymal necrosis or inflammation”

The morphological study of MJ’s liver

Please compare it with the picture of what heroin (for example) does to people’s liver:

Heroin intake leads to significant morphological changes in the liver tissue (vesicular  changes, fat changes, chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis). The intensity of these changes increases with duration of heroin  usage. Direct hepatoxic effects of heroin are vesicular changes in hepatocytes, fat changes are the result of chronic influence of alcohol, whereas the rest of the morphological lesions to the liver are the result of the interaction of heroin, viral infection and alcohol. http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/mab/mab200503/mab200503-07.pdf

Doctors see a big difference between the liver of a healthy man and that of a drug addict:

A healthy liver next to a deseased liver. The liver is shriveled and its greenish color is visible to the naked eye

A healthy liver is spongy and supple, but if you take a lot of pills at once, Dr. Oz says the liver takes on a greenish hue and becomes softer than normal. “The liver’s just desperately trying to keep up with clearing all these toxins from your body,” he says.

After many years of drug or alcohol abuse, an addict may experience chronic liver disease or cirrhosis of the liver. “Over time, it will scar and become this cirrhotic shriveled liver,” he says. “It goes from this nice, normal liver to this shriveled up carcass that has truly no life left in it.”

The good news? Addicts like Cheryl can reverse the negative effects if they get clean. “The liver can regenerate itself. It can go back to where it was before you started,” Dr. Oz says. “What is absolutely essential is that you stop torturing it and you start doing some of the smart things that we know will support the liver as it tries desperately to rebuild itself as you rebuild your life.”

http://www.oprah.com/health/Dr-Oz-on-Prescription-Pill-Addiction/6

And Michael’s liver was healthy as was already noted above. The liver was described by the coroner to be without any change. The description also said: “It is red-brown, its consistency is soft and the cut surface is smooth”. 

Goodness gracious, what horrid things we have to discuss due to this autopsy program – as if he was a piece of meat!

There were no signs of changes in MJ’s liver due to the alleged drug-addiction

The fact that some people are spreading stories that Michael suffered from Demerol addiction prior to his death and even liken him to a heroin addict is totally unforgivable, irrespective of who is doing it – the crazy channel 5 with its morbid idea of entertainment or a source close to the Jacksons’  – Terry Harvey, for example (who also took part in the program as we learn from the viewers’ comments ).

As a side note let me say that the lie that Michael died of Demerol addiction has spread so widely all over Internet that when looking for information about this drug I came upon the following false story on an anti-drug addiction website:

Demerol was in the news after the death of pop music legend Michael Jackson. According to the rumors, it was given to Jackson before he collapsed and died.

http://www.drug-addiction-support.org/About-Demerol-Abuse.html

This is a nasty myth but “rumors” did indeed say that “half an hour before his death Michael was given a shot of Demerol”. Crazy as it is the rumor was attributed to someone close to the Jacksons’ family. In my opinion these kind of lies deserve no less than capital punishment:

A celebrity website citing an interview with an unidentified ”close member” of the Jackson family, reported the entertainer was injected with Demerol about half an hour before he went into cardiac arrest.

A senior law enforcement official told a news channel that Jackson was ”heavily addicted” to the painkiller Oxycontin and was injected daily with that medication, along with Demerol.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-06-28/us/28159332_1_demerol-jackson-biographer-jackson-family

All these stories about “daily Oxycontin” and Demerol allegedly being the cause of Michael’s death should be unrelentingly fought and erased with a steel hand.

True, there were two periods in Michael’s life when Demerol was prescribed to him for medical reasons after which he grew dependent on it. But he also managed to overcome his dependency, and it was a double feat for which he should be commended and not reprimanded. In no way did he fit the description of a drug addict – either at the peak of his dependency or when it was finally overcome.

See the description of an addict and you will see that it is absolutely not about MJ:

“Addictive behavior includes a compulsion to obtain heroin by any means necessary, as well as a lack of concern for any other responsibilities one might have to family, employment or even their own children.”

http://www.axisresidentialtreatment.com/heroin-addiction/long-term-health-effects/

I don’t know who was spreading those rumors, but if it is people like Terry Harvey who spoke on the Channel 5 program let me say the following. These people may have correctly noticed the symptoms of deterioration of Michael’s health during This is it rehearsals, but it was the interpretation of what they saw that was totally wrong.

By 2009 Demerol had ceased to be an issue with MJ as the autopsy report shows it and what these people thought to be the result of Demerol in June 2009 may have easily be the effect of Versed and Lorazepam injected into Michael’s veins by Conrad Murray. Or it may have been the result of lack of natural sleep.

Michael felt at his worst when Klein’s cosmetic procedures involving Demerol had been long over and when it was also too late for the Demerol withdrawal,  which takes place several hours after the drug intake.

So it was no Demerol, but something different and the “sources close to the family” had better understand it.

THE DETAILS

The first viewers of the Channel 5 program shared a lot of details about it on the MJJCommunity forum:

http://www.mjjcommunity.com/forum/threads/131549-Message-From-The-Estate-Of-Michael-Jackson-Re-Channel-5-Autopsy-Program/page7

The forum is actually a great source of information (when their senior staff doesn’t meddle with it) and below you will find some of its most informative pieces.

“Question:  Did anyone here actually watch the program? If so, could they share specifically what they said about Michael?

They said Michael was literally always using drugs, did in fact bleach his skin, had an addiction to Demerol, used drugs to get energetic for rehearsals, incorrectly labelled TII rehearsal footage dates, he had a destroyed/non existent nose, bald, vitiligo, lupus, alcohol, painkillers etc. Basically everything MJ did was pop pills and he could only do 30-40 mins of rehearsals a day as well as 1000000 uses of the death pictures that were made clearer to fully show the dead Michael Jackson. It was absolutely disgusting. He had a good weight, that was about it. Bunch of morons.”

“I thought they would use ‘maximum tabloid’ tactics in this programme, and they did. It started out ‘looking’ as if the pathologist was actually in an autopsy room, with a cadaver, with ‘shadows’ of him using implements on the body. It ended with a ‘reconstruction’ of Murray’s last hours with Michael, but mostly portrayed these from Murray’s point of view…the short period out of the room using the phone after Michael fell asleep, the possibility that Michael woke up and helped himself to more medication.

Terry Harvey is said to be a friend of Joe and Tito Jacksons

Terry Harvey, a music promoter and apparent friend of the family said Michael was manipulative and always got what he wanted. Jason Pfeiffer (Klein’s assistant) was interviewed at some length, and said that in the run up to TII, MJ would appear at Klein’s clinic asking for Demerol, and would sometimes pass out (or be tired or loopy) while the children were playing in Klein’s office.

The film mentioned MJ’s ongoing pain issues (and use of pain meds) in the context of the Pepsi recording burns incident. It mentioned the autopsy arthritis and showed film of the concert bridge collapse. It mentioned his lung inflammation and scarring, and mentioned his lupus. It said that his only ‘secret from the public’ was that he wore a wig following the burns to his scalp. It mentioned almost every element from the autopsy, including the facial tattoos eg around his lips.

A fair amount of footage from TII was shown, with many mentions of MJ being ‘ 400 million in debt’. Ian Halperin was one of the contributors as regards MJs’ views about TII (at first wanting to do it, but also having to because of his financial situation) The voiceover relating to the Murray trial mentioned that ‘traces of Propofol were never found in the IV line above the port, ‘but that didn’t sway the Jury, who found Murray guilty’.

The last words of the pathologist- the closing words of the programme – were that ‘in some ways it was a miracle that he lasted as long as he did’.

I learned nothing new (I did not expect to), and I found the programme to be exactly the tabloid presentation I would expect…it was just a ‘Daily Mirror or Daily Star article on TV, presentationally. The words of the pathologist were of course very factual, as regards the autopsy, but the background and method of presentation was extremely distasteful, and most of the contributors were people who presumably were involved ‘for the money’ and for maximum ‘tabloid’ effect.”

“I watched this last night out of interest. At first, the only thing that I found merely positive out of this was when they mentioned that he had in fact had Vitiligo, which many people have just refused to believe for years…..but then they couldn’t leave it at that could they? They still had to make out he lied on national television about the whole skin bleaching crap and still made out that he was trying to make himself look white.  To be honest I just found the whole program disturbing in general…to make out that they knew his life so well just by prodding around his corpse. A corpse that they had to show the photos of as well?” 

“The pathologist started the programme saying something to the effect that an autopsy can tell you not just how someone died, but also how they lived’. 

However the programme really took liberties with that statement eg showing Michael sat in the back of a car, taking tablets…implied Demerol or similar. (The programme mentioned the multiple prescriptions in different names found in his room). 

In terms of the actors representation of him, Michael came across as some sort of shambling, drug-dependent ‘ maestro’ character, at one point swathed in a cloak (I presume they got the cloak idea from the film of MJ walking through the corridor at the Staples centre). 

The programme-makers seem to have tried hard to create a realistic picture of the room in which Michael died (including a doll on the bed…they made sure to include that, of course), but the reconstructions themselves were a bit bizarre, and very un-Mike-like, which made it somewhat easier to watch with a sense of detachment.

I didn’t like the sly and subtle ‘digs’ throughout eg after Michael was pronounced dead, the body ‘was moved without ceremony to the Coroners office’ implying some sort of haste, or lack of respect. I don’t know why they had to add ‘without ceremony’…it was totally unnecessary, and I feel it was put there to add a kind of ‘throw- away’ feeling to the account’.”

“I watched and found the program a bit rubbish but not quite as much rubbish as it could have been. It was saved a little by the fact they had Dr Shepherd who was doing pieces to camera about what he discovered in the coroner’s report but then they had the voiceover narrator who was desperately trying to drum up the sensationalised tabloid stuff which they then had to acknowledge didn’t actually come up in the autopsy.

That synopsis of the program that was published was just wrong. Dr Shepherd said the autopsy showed that MJ was in good shape for a man of his age, normal bmi, organs all in good order, no disease, good heart etc. He had some arthritis but non uncommon in a 50year old, and ‘might limit his movements’.

There was a big segment on Demerol by the narrator, and that MJ was addicted before he died but then it went back to Shepherd and he had to acknowledge that MJ had no Demerol in his system when he died and so it had nothing to do with his death.

What did tick me off big time though about Shepherd was in final conclusion which ended the doc, ‘it was a miracle MJ lasted so long’ referring to MJ’s drug habits. Ridiculous comment from a pathologist after examining a coroner’s report on a body that bore no hallmarks of drug addiction. From a respected pathologist, that was a real mistake to make on TV. The other thing he said was that MJ’s nose had caved in on one side and the ‘bridge was missing’. What’s a nose bridge? The middle part? – that’s not in the report so where on earth did he get that from?

A lot of the rest of the program was just rehashing the drug issues, apparently MJ was addicted to pain killers ever since the Pepsi, and addicted to prop the last 10 years of his life. They did mention the Pepsi accident at length and showed the Munich bridge incident so did show the pain issues MJ had, but what incensed me was the repeating of the claim that Demerol = medical/pharmalogical version of Heroin?! I’ve never come across that before. I’m thinking that in their disappointment in not finding any evidence of hard illegal drug taking by MJ, they’re trying to push that this painkiller is like heroin.

The reconstruction of MJ’s last hours without of focus ‘actors’ was a complete joke as they missed out the last hour of MJ’s life. They seemed to take Murray’s LAPD interview as gospel, unaware that he had changed the times. So a timeline showed Murray finding MJ not breathing at 11.05, the program was then forced to miss out the time of the 911 call as even they knew they couldn’t claim that Murray was spending 1 and half hrs trying to resuscitate MJ and they also had to miss out that Murray was on the phone to his girlfriends for nearly an hour after supposedly finding MJ not breathing. It was just a complete mess. The program makers were embarrassingly clueless as to what happened and there’s no excuse with that Murray trial making everything public. That Dr. Shepherd was stupid to allow himself to be attached to this program.”

NOTE: The thing about “the missing nose bridge” is a fabrication as there was nothing of the kind in the autopsy report. Michael’s lupus did indeed have an adverse effect on the tissues of his nose after the first two nasal surgeries, and this is why the rest of them were connected with that problem (Dr. Richard Strick who reviewed Michael’s medical records spoke about it long time ago).

But no missing bridge was seen or mentioned by the coroner as the autopsy picture of scars on Michael’s face shows it. So even if we assume that Michael experienced it in the past the problem was corrected and was no longer visible at the time of his death:

The autopsy said nothing about the “missing nose bridge”

The MJJC fans also noted the falsity of the nose-bridge missing story:

There is no such thing in the autopsy. Here is what it writes about the nose. The media can keep on harping on the “missing nose” narrative all they want but it’s just not confirmed by his autopsy. There was a bandage on his nose, that’s all, but one would expect it would have been noted if his nose was missing. 

ONE MORE POINT

There was one more point already mentioned here which struck as strange several viewers of the program.

It is the fact that the show was definitely pro-Murray and was therefore aiming to refute the prosecution case against him and suggesting a possibility of overturning the jury verdict at the Murray trial.

Previously there was one comment to that effect and here is one more:

Television can function as an educator. Television has the ability to inform and is instrumental in our recent evolution as humans. It’s not merely an entertainer.

To the documentary itself, it was at times a very difficult watch, people have already commented in this thread as to the way the information was presented and slanted to present a particular, mostly negative, view. But I was delighted with a good number of the facts presented as well. Ultimately, I felt as though the ‘last hours’ were very pro-Murray and seemed to suggest that the prosecution case hinged on the theory that Propofol would be present in the upper tube of Murray’s makeshift drip. They stated that it wasn’t and that the jury ignored it, following it with a baying mob of fervent MJ fans screaming ‘burn in hell’ and the likes as if they had some kind of influence on the jury’s decision. This was hugely frustrating and completely misleading, frankly idiotic. And that’s just ONE of the awful devices they used to manipulate the audience.

The whole thing felt very amateurishly put together. Why go to the bother of finding such a great lookalike of Murray and then use pictures of Jermaine mistakenly thinking it’s Michael and then spell Michael’s name wrong on screen, showing it as ‘Micheal’. LOLZ. Idiots.

No, I am afraid they are no idiots. First they portrayed Michael as a severely sick man and tried to convey to the public the idea that he would have died anyway even if he hadn’t involved himself with Murray or AEG.  And now they are trying to whitewash Conrad Murray and challenge the well-proven prosecution case against him, attempting to exonerate him of his guilt at least in the court of public opinion.

The agenda is definitely there and several steps have already been taken to reach the desired goal. The first step was announcing Murray ‘competent and fit” for the job he was hired for at the recent wrongful death trial and now they lie that the jury at Murray’s trial ignored some crucial piece of evidence – the fact that “there was no Propofol in the upper tubing of the IV makeshift drip”.

The truth of the matter is that this point was discussed at Murray’s trial in every possible detail. Dr. Shafer and Prosecutor David Walgren proved that Michael had been given more than 200ml of Propofol which could be administered only by a drip via a long tubing, so the tubing had been there, only it went into Murray’s pocket in an attempt to hide what really happened that fateful night.

After being used the long tubing with Propofol could easily go into Murray’s pocket but would still leave traces of Propofol in the short tubing at the bottom

For those interested here is the best I could depict of the makeshift IV drip set-up used by Murray.

It shows how the long tubing could be taken away and puzzle the investigators why propofol was found at the top (where a propofol bottle was in the saline bag) and at the bottom (in the short tube), but not in the middle of it.

The middle part was simply removed (see the arrows please).

This long tubing was never retrieved but from the reconstruction of the events the prosecution proved that it had been there before Murray thoroughly cleared away all evidence from the scene of crime, and any further speculation on this matter is totally absurd.

INTERESTING CONNECTIONS

What is not absurd though is an attempt to understand who is standing behind the agenda of this Channel 5 program.

Who may be interested in exonerating Murray besides Murray himself?

The only other possible party is his direct employer under the ‘This is it’ contract which is AEG Live.

When a doctor is negligent, the hospital that hired him has to bear responsibility for what he did, but if the doctor is found not guilty his employer has nothing to answer for either. The same situation is here and this is why Murray’s and AEG’s interests fully coincide.

Murray wants to paint Michael as a hopeless addict to absolve himself of his guilt and AEG wants to do the same – both for Murray and for themselves. If they manage to imprint in people’s minds the idea that “it was a miracle MJ lasted so long”, any claims from Katherine Jackson that her son would have lived a long life if it hadn’t been for Murray and AEG would look groundless. Who would believe her if he would die all the same and what difference would it make if it happened a week later or a week earlier?

Given that now we know in which direction to look, the information from our reader Dialdancer referring to Dee Pfeiffer will no longer take us by surprise. And what Dee Pfeiffer is saying is extremely interesting. It is actually filling the gap and gives our “speculation” about the Murray/AEG connection the necessary substance and weight.

See what she is saying: 

• “When applying for a press pass for the first ‘This is It’ show back in 2009, I was told by Lucy Ellison at AEG Worldwide to apply through the company ‘Outside’. They said that Adam Cotton, dealing with such matters, would get straight back to me. In spite of many emails and calls from March to June, he NEVER got back to me. My final email to Adam was on 19th June, just days before the world became a darker place. I can’t help but ask whether their ignoring of my requests was simply ignorance, or whether there was something more sinister (ie. how much did they know, at the very least about Michael’s stress and predicament). Even more disturbing is the fact that the company tasked with giving out press passes was none other than the very company screening the autopsy programme THIS evening.”

The information is indeed disturbing as it shows that the company screening the present autopsy program on British TV is actually the one which during Michael’s rehearsals was responsible for AEG’s contacts with the press and was close enough to AEG to be entrusted by them to select who to provide with a press pass to the premiere and who not to.

Another interesting connection, isn’t it? And if it did take place in 2009, why can’t we assume that a similar connection may take place in the year 2014 too?

To sum up the above here is one more comment from a insightful reader LiamDoherty who as early as in November 2011 wrote the following:

Q: What do you get when you put a liar, a bunch of corporate promoters, and a frail pop star with a billion dollar song catalogue that’s been indexed as collateral in an unprecedented, lock-tight contract together?

A: A hideous scenario of almost epic levels of exploitation, deception and abuse waiting to happen. Best thing about this scenario of course is that no-one cares because it’s Michael Jackson and no-one gives a damn about him anyway right? He’s just an addict right? Drugs for kicks and a high life mixing it up in nightclubs and opiate dens in Soho or Monaco right?

Except he wasn’t.

Jackson was desperate for the one thing you and I do every night. Sleep. Just sleep. Without it, the body and mind cannot repair vitality and things go horribly wrong rather quickly.  Unfortunately, Jackson didn’t meet someone who understood that bodily crisis; he met someone who was looking out for their own.

During the recently screened interview, Murray, previously a silent, crying defendant in court, now bolshily contradicts the story he told police about his actions while Jackson was dying on June 25, 2009.

He told the “Today” programme he put Jackson to sleep and then left the room to talk on the phone because he didn’t want to wake up the sleep-deprived Jackson. In contrast, he had told cops he had only left Jackson alone for a couple of minutes to use the restroom. Reasons for not mentioning propofol to anyone? Apparently it just “wasn’t important” according to Murray.

So in the end what do we have?

The perfect crime it seems and now with its very own reality show star. You gotta love America. When they **** an innocent man over — and by that I mean Jackson — they do it with bells on.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/11/conrad_murray_sue_imaging_digi.php

The entertainment autopsy program on British TV shows that when they want to do the same **** to the innocent man on the other side of the ocean, they also do it with bells on.

However let us not lose the chance they have provided us with and let us use it to tell each and everyone the truth of what Michael was like and how he died, taking advantage of every opportunity presenting itself – be it a comment on Channel 5, reply to a media article or a talk with a friend or colleague.

Michael was not an addict. He was a much healthier man than an average 50-year old.

And he could have given even 50 shows if he had had enough rest and sleep during the tour. And no need for propofol prior to it would have arisen if it hadn’t been for the shock of having to do 50 concerts with only one day between the shows which fully rid Michael of his sleep.

And he wouldn’t have used Propofol in May and June at all if AEG and Kenny Ortega had not started too late with rehearsals and had not demanded that he worked 6 days a week for two months running with only one day off.  They said that all of them were tired but “all of them” don’t concern me – what concerns me is that they exhausted him even before the tour started.

And Demerol was not an issue with MJ. The symptoms he displayed were most probably due to the benzodiazepine poisoning that occurred due to Conrad Murray’s experiments with Michael’s health. This is why one day he was okay, while on another day he was not.

Hopefully in the future we will learn the full and true story of Michael Jackson’s life and death.

What is clear at this stage though is that the version of it created by Channel 5 is heavily biased in favor of Murray/AEG. It is largely false and it is only due to the need to make it look credible that they sprinkled it with some truth.

*  *  *

In the supplement to this post you will find the email address of the Customer services of Channel 5 in case you want to say a couple of warm words to them.

Channel 5 welcomes all comments from viewers about its programmes. The Customer Services Team produces a daily report, which is circulated throughout the company. We’d be happy to hear from you if you have a comment about our output and details of how to get in touch with us are available here.

We also deal with lots of enquiries and in order to provide the best possible service please note:

If you haven’t found the answer to your enquiry within our FAQs then please contact us using one of the following methods:

By Post:
Customer Services
Channel 5 Television
10 Lower Thames Street
London
EC3R 6EN

>>>ALL IN THE UK>>>By Telephone on:
(020) 8612 7700 or 08457 05 05 05

>>>>>By e-mail using the following address:

customerservices@channel5.com

The Director of Programmes at Channel 5 is called Ben Frow.

His email address is Ben.Frow@five.tv