Prince: Was he killed by Aids?
Reports claim he had HIV since the 1990s
PRINCE was suffering from Aids and had been ‘preparing to die for a little while’, it was reported yesterday.
According to the US showbusiness tabloid National Enquirer, the 57-year-old rock superstar became HIV positive in the 1990s but had kept the condition under control with drugs.
However, the newspaper claimed Prince contracted full-blown Aids six months ago after stopping his treatment because the Jehovah’s Witness convert believed he could be cured through prayer. A ‘music industry source’ told the Enquirer: ‘He was in bad shape. Doctors told Prince his blood count was unusually low and that his body temperature had dropped dangerously below the normal 98.6F to 94F.
‘He was totally iron-deficient, very weak and often disoriented. He rarely ate and when he did, it all came right back up.
‘His face was yellowish‚ the skin on his neck was hanging off and the tips of fingers were a brownish-yellow.’
Prince reportedly had a wild sex life – detailing much of it in his raunchy songs – at the height of his fame in the 1980s and 1990s. Earlier in his career, the threat of contracting HIV
‘God can – and will – cure me’
through unsafe sex wasn’t widely appreciated.
However in the later years, he found God, following his mother into the Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the new claims, he told friends he was dropping his HIV medication because ‘God can – and will – cure me’.
The Aids allegations do not contradict earlier reports that the star was addicted to a powerful painkiller, Percocet, which he took to cope with hip and ankle pain after years of wearing high-heeled boots.
Police investigators have confirmed they discovered prescription painkillers in Prince’s possession after he collapsed last Thursday in a lift at his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
They have called in federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration to help determine whether the drugs played a role in his death.
It was claimed last night that investigators had obtained a search warrant for Prince’s house in an attempt to discover who had been supplying him with drugs.
Prince had publicly admitted he had been suffering from flu, an illness to which Aids sufferers are vulnerable. Dr Deni Carise, a US drug addiction expert, said that if Prince was taking an opiate drug such as Percocet while battling a bad dose of flu, the combination could ‘wreak havoc with your respiratory system’ and even prove fatal.
The National Enquirer claimed Prince’s close friends and family were trying to censor any post-mortem examination report to spare his loved ones what might be a painful insight into his lifestyle.