When Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest, rescuers took him to a place known for bringing the dead back to life. A world-renowned surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center has pioneered a way to revive people that most doctors would have long written off, including a woman whose heart had stopped for 2 1/2 hours.

"They took people who were basically dead, not all that different than Michael Jackson, and saved most of them," said Dr. Lance Becker, an emergency medicine specialist at the University of Pennsylvania and an American Heart Association spokesman.

Could Jackson, too, have been saved?

It's impossible to know. Doctors at the hospital worked on him for an hour. The UCLA expert, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Gerald Buckberg, said he was not personally involved in Jackson's treatment, and that too little is known about what preceded it.

"We have no idea when he died versus when he was found," Buckberg said in a telephone interview.