http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6582435.ece
"....The Sun newspaper today reported that Jackson aides told medics at the UCLA emergency room that the star had collapsed after an injection of the drug Demerol, a powerful painkiller which is similar to morphine and which is known to come with the risk of cardiac arrest.
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."
No confirmation was immediately available on that report, but the celebrity website TMZ said that Jackson had on Wednesday night attended a rehearsal at LA's Staples Center to prepare for the series of 50 concerts scheduled for London's O2 dome that had been due to start next month and last into next year.
Brian Oxman, a Jackson family lawyer and spokesman, told CNN that Jackson had been struggling to cope with the after-effects of various performance injuries, including a damaged vertebra and a broken leg, which had been interrupting scheduled rehearsal for the London dates.
He went on to accuse those around Jackson of letting him slip into dependency on prescription drugs and painkillers.
"I can only tell you that this is not something which has been unexpected," Mr Oxman told CNN from the LA hospital as family members came to terms with the news from doctors.
"This family has been trying for months and months to take care of Michael Jackson. The people who have surrounded him have been enabling him: if you think that the case of Anna Nicole Smith was an abuse, it is nothing to what we have seen taking place in Michael Jackson's life."
He added: "I can tell you for sure that this is something I warned about. Where there is smoke there is fire."
Jackson's home in the Holmby Hills - once the home of the British actor Sean Connery - was searched by detectives from LAPD's Robbery Homicide division at the behest of city police chief William Bratton - although officers called it an "everyday" event.
The allegations of drug abuse were echoed by Jacksons former producer and friend, Tarak Ben Ammar, who denounced the late pop icon's doctors ascriminals andcharlatans who had taken advantage of his hypochondria.
Its clear that the criminals in this affair are the doctors who treated him throughout his career, who destroyed his face, who gave him medicine to ease his pain, he told Frances Europe 1 radio..."
