Yes, Michael Jackson had vitiligo, a medical condition that causes patchy loss of melanin pigment from the skin. Clinically, vitiligo appears as milk-white irregularly oval patches of skin, which are small at the beginning but enlarge gradually. For many years Jackson, who was African American, had faced rumors that he bleached his skin in an attempt to âlook white.â However, he revealed his diagnosis in 1993 in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey, telling her that his skin started to change in the early 1980s, about the time he released his massive-selling album Thriller (1982). After Jacksonâs death in 2009, the autopsy report confirmed that he had vitiligo.
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