Doctors at odds over Jackson drug claims

Armed with decades of experience, IV bags and syringes, the men showed jurors how propofol, a powerful, milky-white anaesthetic, may have flowed from a bottle into Jackson’s body on the morning of June 25, 2009.

Doctors Paul White and Steven Shafer worked alongside each other for years and are credited with helping bring propofol to operating rooms and making its usage safe.

But their different theories on how Jackson died from the drug – whether his personal physician Conrad Murray administered it or the singer injected it himself – have sparked a clash of harsh rhetoric between the two men more familiar with operating rooms and classrooms than the high stakes of a celebrity trial.

White and Shafer were colleagues at Stanford University and conducted research on propofol before it was approved for use in US operating rooms in 1989. Both help edit a leading anaesthesia journal. Until White’s retirement last year, both were practising anaesthetists.

Each man’s search to explain how Jackson died led them to conduct their own research and computer modelling.

The tension between them began after Shafer, an affable Columbia University researcher, told jurors on October 20 that he was “disappointed” in White for suggesting earlier that Jackson may have drunk the fatal dose of propofol.

Shafer’s dismissive comment that even first-year medical students knew that would not work cut deeply for White, who worked on propofol for six years before it was approved for use in the United States.

As Shafer testified, White occasionally shook his head until being admonished by a judge to stop making any gestures in court.

The courtroom rhetoric between the men cooled last week, with White repeatedly crediting Shafer for his work.

“D. Shafer is actually a good friend, and he actually helped me on a number of the papers,” White said.

White left behind any hurt feelings as he took the witness stand and matter-of-factly detailed his theory that Jackson must have given himself a fatal dose of propofol. It was the only explanation, White said, for the levels of the drug found in Jackson’s blood and urine during an autopsy.

Shafer was not in the courtroom then, but may be called as a rebuttal witness.

Shafer previously ruled out the self-administration theory, calling it “crazy” and saying Jackson would have been too groggy to pull it off. For emphasis, he placed the theory on a chart and crossed it out with a big red “X”. He told jurors the only explanation for Jackson’s death was that Murray placed the singer on an IV propofol drip and left the room when he appeared to be sleeping comfortably.

Shafer said Murray committed 17 violations of the standard of care and should have never been giving the singer propofol as a sleep aid.

Jurors will undoubtedly have a better understanding of the drug when they begin deliberations later this week. Which of the professors’ theories they believe caused Jackson’s death could seal Murray’s fate.