Doctors Say Liz Taylor Is Breathing Easier, Still Very Ill

Elizabeth Taylor was breathing more easily on Wednesday--and so too, it seemed, was the world.

Doctors at St. John’s Hospital and Medical Center in Santa Monica announced that the film legend, suffering a perilous bout with pneumonia, is now off a ventilator and breathing on her own through an oxygen mask.

“Her life was in jeopardy over the weekend,” said Dr. Bernard Weintraub, a pulmonary specialist, as a dozen TV cameras rolled. “For the time being at least, I believe that has passed.”

In a press conference that drew more than 75 reporters representing various corners of the globe and featured probing questions about AIDS and drug abuse, Weintraub and another physician treating the 58-year-old Taylor said that tests, including a biopsy of lung tissue, strongly indicate the actress is suffering from viral pneumonia.

Weintraub and Dr. Patricia Murray, who is Taylor’s attending physician, said that although a critical stage of the illness is over, the actress remains seriously ill and will continue treatment in the intensive care unit with oxygen and antibiotics.

Asked about Taylor’s spirits, Murray said: “We just spoke to her upstairs before we came down here and she was very happy that the (ventilator) tube was out. She was smiling for the first time in a few days and she told me she would come out and wave at you, but she wasn’t in her balcony attire.”

As Taylor herself had emphasized in an April 17 press release, doctors took care to stress there was no sign that she has AIDS. Nor is there any evidence of cancer, doctors said.

Speculation that Taylor, a leading fund-raiser for AIDS research, had encountered the virus grew almost immediately after she was hospitalized April 9 for a sinus infection and a high fever.

The doctors parried persistent questioning about Taylor’s history of drug abuse. Taylor has acknowledged addictions to prescription painkillers and sleeping pills, and was treated in 1983 and 1988 for drug dependency at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage.

Murray and Weintraub repeatedly said they had no knowledge or evidence of recent drug abuse.

“We’re treating her for pneumonia,” Weintraub said. “ . . . We’ve done a lot of tests. I don’t think its necessary right now to go into the details of those studies. There is no evidence that any of her previous medication, whatever that was, has had any effect on the present illness.”

Taylor has received “some pain medication,” Weintraub added. “But I have to tell you it is substantially less” than what would normally be expected for someone so ill.

Last week, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office called an end to an investigation that focused on several physicians who allegedly over-prescribed painkillers to the actress. In a statement, the district attorney’s office said that prescribing practices “fell below the accepted standards of medical practice,” but noted that doctors “were also attempting to deal with her addiction through alternative means of therapy and treatment, and . . . their conduct was devoid of criminal intent.”

The press conference attracted journalists from television and news outlets in Europe, Japan and Latin America. Some paparazzi have been patrolling the hospital grounds in recent days, hoping to photograph Taylor’s visiting relatives and friends.

Wednesday’s media event also attracted two fans from St. Louis who happened to be vacationing in Southern California. They recorded the event with a video camera.

“My greatest wish fulfillment would be to meet her. But I don’t think that will ever happen,” Dorothy Small explained. “Anyway, we’re close to her. This is probably the closest we’ll ever get to her.”