Questions arise about role of doctor

LOS ANGELES --- Elvis had one. So did Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe. They are the doctors who cater to celebrities, dispensing painkillers and sedatives to some of Hollywood's entertainers.

Now, as police investigate Michael Jackson's death, questions are swirling around the King of Pop's personal cardiologist and his actions in the star's final days.

Dr. Conrad Murray reportedly was with Mr. Jackson when he stopped breathing Thursday and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. An ambulance crew rushed him to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The cardiologist has hired a Houston-based law firm and on Saturday, an attorney there said he was cooperating.

The suspicions of Mr. Jackson's friends and family fit into a long-standing pattern of celebrity doctors becoming entangled in death inquiries involving prescriptions.

Doctors can become enchanted by the glamour of the celebrity lifestyle.

In other instances, the doctors themselves might have questionable pasts or significant debts, and caring for a celebrity allows them to make large amounts of money, said Julie Albright, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.

"Some of these people might not be the most successful doctors, so the money will also buy their complicity in fueling a drug habit," said Ms. Albright, who was not specifically speaking about Dr. Murray.

Records reveal years of financial troubles for Dr. Murray, a 1989 graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn., who practices in California, Nevada and Texas.

Over the past 18 months, his Nevada practice, Global Cardiovascular Associates, has been slapped with more than $400,000 in court judgments: $228,000 to Citicorp Vendor Finance Inc., $71,000 to an education loan company and $135,000 to a leasing firm. He faces at least two pending cases.

Best-selling author Deepak Chopra, a longtime friend of Mr. Jackson and a licensed medical doctor, said he first became concerned about the pop star's drug use in 2005, when Mr. Jackson visited him after his trial on sex abuse allegations.

Dr. Chopra, a spiritual adviser, said Mr. Jackson asked him to prescribe painkillers and already had a bottle of Oxycontin.

"I was kind of a bit alarmed. I said, 'Why are you taking that. You don't need that,' and then I started to probe a little further, and after I grilled him a little bit, he admitted he was getting them from a bunch of doctors," Dr. Chopra said.

He said he refused to prescribe the medicine, but over the next four years the nanny of Mr. Jackson's children would periodically call to say that a parade of doctors was coming to his home. One time she tried to stage an intervention with Dr. Chopra's help, he said.