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.”

via newsday.com

As weird as Michael Jackson is, we know no one would’ve wished this on him. Hopefully he’ll pull through...