True to our predictions, Dr Conrad Murray has been found guilty of killing Michael Jackson by administering to the Pop icon, heavy dosages of the powerful theatre anaesthetic, Propofol and anti-anxiety drug, Lorazepam. With some states having already de-registered this latest version of Doctor Death, Dr. Murray’s medical career is not looking bright at all. Hopefully for his family, he has made enough "stash" as a celebrity doctor to secure his financial future. He has options though. An autobiographical publication and maybe offers for movie rights will surely lurk close to him in the corner of some Californian jail cell.
Anyway, let us get to the heart of this blog post. Michael Jackson's family have from day one, laid the blame for the death of the King of Pop squarely on Dr. Murray's shoulders; So have the icon's millions of fans worldwide, as well as Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, David Walgren and the jury. Is this entirely true and fair? As much as I also adored the musical genius of Jackson, I emphatically say, "NO!"
What some of my fellow star struck and emotionally scarred fans forget is that, "He who pays the Piper plays the tune." The issue is not that the dosage was too and high and therefore fatal. It is not about whether the overdose was self administered by Jackson or by Murray. The fact that Jackson knowingly took the drug outside of the walls of a hospital theatre means that he shares an equal if not greater blame than his doctor does. It is shockingly naive to think that "Doctor Death" was paid a whooping $150 000 a month to just pump anything he wanted into Jacko's anatomy, without Jackson having any awareness or say in it all. MJ did not become a singing and stage performing sensation from being stupid and clueless. It is therefore best to scratch that notion from our books of blame.
I am not at all suggesting that Murray should have been left to go scot-free. On the contrary, a four year sentence (possibly under house arrest) could be rather lenient for this Grenada born medic who shattered the Hippocratic oath and ethics into smithereens. My qualms are with the manner in which most people have conveniently forgotten that the illegal activities of this doctor were financed by Jackson himself. I have a problem with the insinuation that prior to his death, Jackson was a healthy, bouncy, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed individual who had no long history of addiction to prescription drugs.
Overdose or not, Propofol had no place in Jackson's body and Murray certainly did not put a gun to Jackson's head for him to take it. Our airwaves will never be the same and our TV sets will probably never again display the same levels of dazzle that we witnessed in the days of Thriller, Bad, and Heal the World. Sad as that may be, let us not allow our emotions to cloud our judgements. One needs to think objectively when attempting to answer the question posed by one of Jacko's own songs, "The whole world wants to know, who's bad?"
For History not to judge us harshly in the future, we need to write down suicide as the cause of Michael Jackson's death on the very same page that we record Dr. Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter verdict.
