‘Bubble boy’ spent life in plastic chambers and couldn’t interact with outside world before death aged 12
A boy who had to spend his life in plastic chambers because of a condition he was born with ended up being called 'bubble boy' as he had to live in a protected environment.
In 1971 a boy named David Vetter was born in Texas with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a disease which weakens a person's immune system to the point that anyone with it would be incredibly vulnerable to diseases.
His parents, Carol Ann and David Joseph, had previously had a son who had also been born with SCID and had died at seven months old, with them being told by doctors that any other male children they had stood a chance of also having it.
The only treatment at the time was a bone marrow transplant from an exact match, and none of David's family turned out to be close enough despite hopes that David's sister Katherine might be.
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As such, David had to live in a sterilised environment in plastic bubbles in the hospital and at the family home.
He spent the first few years of his life in a plastic chamber, anything passed through including food, water and clothes had to be sterilised for up to several days before they could be given to the boy.
One of the items passed through to David was a TV, and a playroom was built for him inside the sterilised chamber, while another chamber was built for him at his family's home so he could spend time there.
"As parents of an afflicted child, the only thing we had in our control was to see that David received the best possible care," Carol Ann told the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
"We trusted our doctors. We were grateful for the bubble; the bubble was the only treatment option available for David at the time.
"If it hadn’t been for the bubble, we would not have had him for 12 years. Our goals were to keep David safe, bring the outside in, and make sure he felt loved."
NASA made him a special suit which allowed him to leave the bubble for a time, and there was also a transport chamber so he could go between home and the hospital.
However, PBS reports that he only used the NASA suit six times as the boy was worried that germs in the outside world might get him through the suit as he was outside his bubble.
In 1981 he moved to his family home full time to live in a bubble there and by 1983 medical science had advanced to the point that incompatible bone marrow could be transplanted.
On 21 October, 1983, David was infused with two ounces of his sister's bone marrow in the hopes that his body could start to produce antibodies and give him an immune system that could get him out of his bubble.
Tragically, doctors didn't realise his sister's bone marrow contained traces of Epstein-Barr virus as their screening could not detect it, which spread around David's body and resulted in hundreds of tumours.
He left his bubble on 7 February, 1984 and died 15 days later, in 1990 a Texas school was named after him and there have been several films and TV shows which took inspiration from the 'bubble boy'.
Joe Harker