Michael Jackson - "Close to Death"

Biographer: Michael Jackson needs lung transplant (Newsday)

Michael Jackson is ailing from a rare lung condition and needs to undergo a transplant, according to the author of a new biography on the King of Pop.

Author Ian Halperin said Jackson, 50, suffers from Alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, a condition that can be fatal.

" 'He's had it for years, but it's gotten worse,'" Halperin said in an interview In Touch magazine. `"He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it. He also has emphysema and chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, which his doctors have had a lot of trouble stopping. It's the bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him.'"

Halperin also said Jackson "can barely speak'" and is having trouble seeing: "The vision in his left eye is 95 percent gone.'"

Okay this is just too much drama for a person to live with if it is true. Michael Jackson is blind? Can't speak? Needs new lungs? Is bleeding? On top of his pearly white skin and artificial nose? Oy.