David Vetter
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David Phillip Vetter (September 21, 1971 – February 22, 1984) was a boy from Houston, Texas, United States who suffered from a rare genetic disease now known as Severe Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome (SCID). Forced to live in a sterile environment, he became popular with the media as the boy in the plastic bubble.
David's parents, David Joseph Vetter Jr. and Carol Ann Vetter, had one daughter, Katherine; their first son, named David Joseph Vetter III, died seven months after birth. Doctors said that the baby boy had been born with no immune system due to a genetic condition. Each further son the couple might conceive would have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the same condition. Three doctors from Baylor College of Medicine—John Montgomery, Mary Ann South and Raphael Wilson (a PhD, not MD)—told the Vetters that if they had another child with SCID, the child could be placed in a sterile isolator until a cure could be found. The couple were anxious to have another child to carry on the family name. So, believing that after a short treatment their child could live a normal life, they decided to go through another pregnancy.
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[edit] Birth
A special sterilized cocoon bed was prepared for David at birth. Only twenty seconds after being removed from his mother's womb, David entered the germ-free environment that would be his home for most of his life. Water, air, food, diapers, clothes, all were disinfected with special cleaning agents before entering his cocoon. He was handled only through special plastic gloves attached to the walls.
The doctors had decided that a bone marrow transplant may give David's immune system a jump start; however they had expected that David's sister, Katherine, would be a match. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Now, what was set up as a temporary solution had become his home, and as he grew, they had to allocate a hospital room for him to live in. As the years went by, David moved to other environments in the hospital, each one bigger to fit him and the bubble.
The researchers and his parents tried to give him a normal life: he had formal education, watched TV, and learned about germs. After time, he became aware of the outside world and his special condition.
[edit] NASA suit
In 1977, researchers from NASA used their experience with the fabrication of space suits to develop a special US$50,000 suit that would allow David to get out of his cocoon and walk in the outside world. The cumbersome suit was connected to his bubble via an 8-foot (2.5 metre) long cloth tube so that he could venture outside without risk of contamination.
On the day Vetter was to receive his gift, many scientists and the press attended to watch the "bubble boy" emerge from his bubble. To everyone's disappointment, however, David refused to wear the suit for the press. A few hours later, after the press had left, he crawled down the tube, but upon pushing his head into the suit he let out a scream and exclaimed "That's the kind of place where germs live!" Later he became more comfortable with the suit, but only used it seven times before outgrowing it and never using the replacement suit provided for him by NASA.
[edit] Psychological aspects
Although the press created an image of a healthy young boy trapped in a bubble, David was psychologically unstable, primarily due to the lack of any human contact. Normally presenting a painstakingly polite facade, he was increasingly angry and depressed about his condition and would act out. On one occasion, when one of his doctors had a heart attack, he spread his own excrement all over the bubble.
[edit] Death
After many years, David's situation became unbearable. He was a full-grown boy and the small expectations for finding a cure were still the same as when he was a baby. Doctors feared that as a teenager he would become even more unpredictable and uncontrollable. The U.S. government spoke about cutting the research funding as it showed no results and there was a growing debate over the ethics of that experiment, with public opinion becoming less supportive of the project. Everyone felt uneasy with the situation and agreed that he simply could not be kept there forever.
In 1980, his doctors, Ralph Feigin and William Shearer, suggested placing him on a regime of gamma globulin and antibiotics and removing him from the bubble, but since that almost certainly would have condemned him to death, his parents refused. Three years later they decided to perform a bone marrow transplant, the marrow being donated by his sister Katherine. A few months after the operation, David started having diarrhea, fever and severe vomiting. These symptoms led to David being taken out of the bubble.
David left his bubble for the first time in 1984. Katherine's bone marrow contained traces of a dormant virus Epstein-Barr. Once inside of David's body, the virus spread which produced hundreds of cancerous tumors. He died 15 days later on February 22, 1984 of Burkitt's lymphoma.
[edit] Impact on popular culture
Main article: Boy in the bubble
David'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.
His story also 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 David's story.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- PBS: The Boy in the Bubble (PBS American Experience series.) The program "The Boy in the Bubble" aired on 2006-04-10. The website features people, events, timeline, and a picture gallery, among others.
- Houston Press: Bursting the bubble "Bubble Boy" David Vetter was hardly the happy, well-adjusted child portrayed in the media. Thirteen years after his death, his friend Mary Murphy is fighting to tell his story.
- Dead or Alive: David, the bubble boy
- About: Freedom for the Boy in the Bubble Gene therapy may hold key to cure
- HistoryWired: "The Boy in the Bubble" National Museum of American History holds medical and personal artifacts of David the Boy in the Bubble, including Space Suit
- Sad Story of Boy in Bubble Wired Magazine Article
