They certainly don't appear to have had Michael's well-being at the top of their list of prescribing priorities. Those two drugs alone could have caused his respiratory and cardiac arrest, with or without any SSRIs.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25696326-26397,00.html
Michael Jackson's weakness 'exploited by charlatan doctors'
Brad Norington | June 27, 2009
MICHAEL Jackson died "because he was taking all sorts of medicines" prescribed by "charlatan" doctors who exploited his hypochondria, the pop star's friend and former producer Tarak Ben Ammar said last night.
"It's 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," the Tunisian producer told France's Europe 1 radio.
"He was a hypochondriac and one never really knew if he was sick because he had become surrounded by charlatan doctors who were billing him for thousands and thousands of dollars worth of drugs, vitamins."
He said Jackson regularly took sleeping pills, adding he had never seen him take illegal drugs. "He ate badly, he didn't have a very healthy life, he couldn't do sport," he said.
Doubts had already emerged about whether Jackson's health would stand up to 50 concerts at London's O2 arena from next month. Despite friends urging him to pull back, he was reportedly training and rehearsing six hours a day near his rented $US100,000-a-month mansion in the Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air, where he collapsed.
"He wanted to rehearse more, but the medications were getting in the way," said Brian Oxman, a friend and former Jackson family lawyer who was with two of the reclusive star's brothers at the UCLA Medical Centre, where he was confirmed dead. Mr Oxman said he had warned the family that if Jackson "wound up dead", he would protest about abuse of prescription drugs.
Jackson was widely reported to have been addicted to painkillers. "We feared that this kind of thing would happen, and here we are," Mr Oxman said.
Mr Oxman declined to go into the specifics of the medications taken by Jackson, and said he would await the results of toxicology results after today's autopsy.
"I won't jump to conclusions, I won't point fingers," he said on MSNBC television. "But when the results of this testing is going to be completed, I intend to be very loud and vocal, depending on the outcome of those tests."
While preliminary results of the autopsy could be released today, toxicology results are expected to take longer.
Tom Potts, an Access Hollywood reporter, claimed Jackson had been fed "illegal prescriptions in massive quantities" brought into the US from Mexico. Potts said some supporters had wanted to "screen out" these drugs as a way to help the singer.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating Jackson's death, but a spokesman indicated it was normal because of his celebrity. "Don't read into anything," he said...."
