Jackson's dermatologist says Murray fallout hurts

[all4loveandbelieve]

Dr. Arnold Klein hovers over a 50-year-old woman, a syringe filled with the promise of youth in hand and a look of concentration on his face. At this moment he appears a contented man.

"Put me next to a patient, give me a needle and I'm really happy," he says. But all is not perfection for the dermatologist to the stars.

Klein and Conrad Murray were Michael Jackson's key physicians during the pop star's final weeks in June 2009. Murray is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's drug-related death, while Klein, who treated Jackson for more than 25 years and called him "my best friend," was cleared of any wrongdoing by authorities.

Murray's defense team, however, is making Klein a part of the trial, claiming he fostered the singer's addiction to a medication, Demerol, and that it played a part in his death. No Demerol was found in Jackson's body.

The allegations, denied by Klein's attorney, reverberate painfully for the 66-year-old doctor whose patient list has boasted Elizabeth Taylor, Dolly Parton, Carrie Fisher and many more celebrities.

"I see stuff on the Internet and it hurts, because I don't like to be called a bad doctor," Klein said, referring to online news and chatter about the trial that enters its fourth week Monday.

"All I'm trying to do is be the best doctor I can," added the intense Klein, whose words spill out hurriedly and who often ends sentences with the entreaties "You understand?" or "You have to understand that."

Murray, who has pleaded innocent, is accused of failing to monitor Jackson as the singer received a fatal dose of propofol (Diprivan is the drug's commercial name) combined with a variety of other drugs including diazepam (Valium) and lorazepam (Ativan).

Jackson, on the brink of a comeback at age 50, had complained repeatedly of insomnia and his need for drugs to help him sleep as he got ready for a strenuous London concert schedule.

Despite Klein's anxiety over damage to his reputation, he says the fallout has been minimal. Media that sometimes camp outside his office have kept away certain high-profile patients, including "royal families from around the world, political dignitaries, people who don't want to deal with the paparazzi," Klein said.

But Hollywood's crowned heads, the actors and others who helped Klein build his practice and his fame, aren't so faint-hearted. Whether patients or friends, they are speaking up for him.

Carrie Fisher is both. The actress ("Star Wars") and writer ("Wishful Drinking,""Postcards From the Edge"), replied with a firm "no" when asked if she was uneasy hearing Klein's name invoked in the Murray case.

"Michael and Arnie had a really good relationship. ... It was a shame there was any focus brought (in the trial), because that became what everyone knew about" Klein, she said.

David Geffen, the prominent music and film executive who has long worked with Klein in the fight against AIDS, weighed in with a letter addressed "Dear Arnie" and written to be shared.

"In light of all that is being said about you in the press I was compelled to add my truths. I have never known a doctor who tries to know and learn everything as completely as you do, a doctor who has always been there for me," Geffen wrote.

Fisher contends that her own past prescription drug abuse, about which she has spoken and written, prove Klein's ethics. He never supplied her and, to the contrary, encouraged her to kick her habit, she said.

"If anyone would know, it would have been me," Fisher said with a rueful laugh. "He's not one of the doctors you would hit up for (drugs)."

Garo Ghazarian, Klein's lawyer, has called the defense claim that Klein contributed to Jackson's death "preposterous" and denied that Jackson was addicted to the Demerol used for pain relief "during medical procedures." (He did not detail them, and Klein declined to discuss issues directly related to the trial or whether it was affecting his private life.)


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