Los Angeles - Former pop idol Michael Jackson is fighting for his life and will die if he does not receive a lung transplant, his biographer has told US gossip magazine In Touch.

Author Ian Halperin said that Jackson, 50, is suffering from the rare genetic illness, Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, as well as emphysema and gastrointestinal bleeding. Halperin also claimed that the singer can barely speak and is 95-per cent blind in his left eye.

"He's had it for years, but it's gotten worse," Halperin told In Touch magazine. "He needs a lung transplant but may be too weak to go through with it...[But] it's the [gastrointestinal] bleeding that is the most problematic part. It could kill him." (dpa)