David Vetter

David Vetter
Born	September 21, 1971(1971-09-21) Houston, Texas, U.S.
Died	February 22, 1984(1984-02-22) (aged 12) Montgomery County, Texas, U.S.
Cause of death	Lymphoma; complications from SCID

David Phillip Vetter (September 21, 1971 – February 22, 1984) was a Texas child who suffered from a rare genetic disease, severe combined immune deficiency syndrome (SCID), and lived almost his entire life in a specially-constructed bubble-shaped sterile environment at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. He died in 1984, at the age of 12, after an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant from his sister. He became popular with the media as "the boy in the plastic bubble".

After the death of their first son, David Joseph Vetter III, seven months after his birth, due to SCID, parents David Joseph Vetter Jr. and Carol Ann Vetter were advised by physicians that any male children they might conceive would have a 50% chance of inheriting the disease. At the time, the only treatment plan for children born with this condition was isolation in a sterile environment until such time as a bone marrow donor was identified and a successful bone marrow transplant. The Vetters, who already had a daughter, decided to proceed with another pregnancy. Their third child, David Phillip Vetter, was born September 21, 1971.

Birth

A special sterilized cocoon bed was prepared for David at his birth. Less than ten seconds after being removed from his mother's womb, David entered the plastic germ-free environment that would be his home for most of his life. David was baptized a Catholic with sterilized holy water once he had entered the bubble. Plans to proceed with a bone marrow transplant came to a halt after it was determined that the prospective donor, David's sister, Katherine, was not a match.

Life in the bubble

Water, air, food, diapers, and clothes were sterilized before entering the sterile chamber. Items were placed in a chamber filled with ethylene oxide gas for four hours at 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60˚C), and then aerated for a period of one to seven days before being placed in the sterile chamber.

After being placed in the sterile chamber, David was touched only through special plastic gloves attached to the walls of the chamber. The chamber was kept inflated by air compressors that were very loud, making communications with the boy very difficult. His parents and medical team sought to provide him as normal a life as possible, including a formal education, and a television and playroom inside the sterile chamber. About three years after David's birth, the treatment team built an additional sterile chamber in his parents' home in Conroe, Texas, and a transport chamber so that David could spend two-to-three week periods at home. David had his sister and friends for company while at home. A friend arranged for a special showing of Return of the Jedi at a local movie theater that David attended in his transport chamber.

When David was four years old, he discovered that he could poke holes in his bubble using a butterfly syringe that was left inside the chamber by mistake. At this point, the treatment team explained germs and David's condition to him. As he grew older, he became aware of the world outside his chamber and expressed interest in participating in the world that he could see outside the windows of the hospital and via television.

The program The Boy in the Bubble aired in 2006. The website features people, events, timeline, and a picture gallery.

Psychological and ethical aspects

David came to be considered psychologically unstable due to the lack of human contact and his increasing realization of his limited prospects for normal life. As a young child, he presented a painstakingly polite façade, but as he grew older, appeared to become increasingly angry and depressed. He was extremely anxious about germs, including repeated nightmares about the "King of Germs". The case raised numerous ethical questions, including whether parents with the genetic traits producing a 50% chance of SCID should have children, and whether the knowledge produced by such research justified allowing or encouraging parents to have children subject to this risk. At the time, once a child was born with SCID, he would either be moved into a sterile environment or quickly die from infection.^{[citation needed]}

NASA suit

In 1977, researchers from NASA used their experience with the fabrication of space suits to develop a special US$50,000 ($191,800 in 2012) suit that would allow Vetter to get out of his bubble and walk in the outside world. The cumbersome suit was connected to his bubble via an eight-foot (2.5 m) long cloth tube so that he could venture outside without serious risk of contamination. David was initially resistant to the suit, and though he later became more comfortable with the suit, he used it only seven times before outgrowing it, and never used the replacement suit provided for him by NASA.^{[citation needed]}

Last months

Approximately $1.3 million was spent on David's care, but scientific study failed to produce a true "cure" and no donor match had been identified. Physicians expressed concern that, as a teenager, David could become unpredictable and uncontrollable. Those concerns and advances in unmatched bone marrow operations led the medical team to recommend, and the family to decide to attempt, an unmatched bone marrow transplant through intravenous lines running into the bubble. The transplant operation went well, and produced hopes that he would be able to leave the chamber. A few months later, however, David became ill, for the first time in his life, with diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting and intestinal bleeding. The symptoms were so severe that he had to be taken out of the chamber for treatment.

Death

He died 15 days later on February 22, 1984, from Burkitt's lymphoma, aged 12. The autopsy revealed that the donor bone marrow contained traces of a dormant virus, Epstein-Barr, which had been undetectable in the pre-transplant screening. Once transplanted, the virus spread and produced hundreds of cancerous tumors.

Legacy

An elementary school which opened in 1990 in The Woodlands in unincorporated Montgomery County, Texas was named David Elementary after Vetter.

Aftermath

David's parents later divorced. His father was later elected mayor of Shenandoah, Texas. His mother married a People magazine reporter who had written about her son.

David's psychologist Mary Murphy wrote a book about the case that was to be published in 1995 but publication was blocked by David's parents. "Was It Worth It? The True Story of David, the Bubble Boy". http://www.bubbleboybook.com. 

Impact on popular culture

Main article: Boy in the bubble

• David Vetter's story, along with that of aplastic anemia patient Ted DeVita, directly inspired the widely recognized modern American pop culture reference to the boy in the bubble. The 1976 made-for-television movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (starring John Travolta and Diana Hyland) was the result.
• David himself was featured regularly on 3-2-1 Contact.
• Vetter's story inspired the 2001 comedy film Bubble Boy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
• The video for Simply Red's "The Air That I Breathe" is also a nod to Vetter's story.
• An episode of Seinfeld was loosely based on the bubble boy concept.
• The 1986 film Crystal Heart (originally released as Corazón de Cristal) was also inspired by his life.
• The opening song on Paul Simon's 1986 album Graceland is titled "The Boy in the Bubble". The lyrics deal with the complex human consequences of modern technology, and include the lines "Medicine is magical and magical is art/The boy in the bubble/And the baby with the baboon heart." (The latter reference is to Baby Fae, who was the subject of another widely publicized medical experiment that also ended in tragedy.)

See also

• Ted DeVita
• Ralph Feigin