David Vetter
David Joseph Vetter III (September 21, 1971–February 22, 1984) was a boy from Houston, Texas who suffered from a rare genetic disease now known as Severe Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Forced to live in a sterile environment, he became popular with the media as the boy in the plastic bubble.
David's parents, David Vetter Jr. and Carol Ann Vetter, had tried to have a child before, but the child died six months after birth. Doctors said that the baby had been born with no immune system due to a genetic condition. This meant that any offspring of the couple would suffer the same fate. Three doctors from Baylor College of Medicine—John Montgomery, Mary Ann South and Raphael Wilson—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.
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 wall.
As time passed on, the research on David's disease did not yield any result. 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.
NASA suit
In 1977, researchers from NASA used their experience with the fabrication of space suits to develop a special $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 a 2.5m long stainless steel 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 six times before outgrowing it and never used the replacement suit provided for him by NASA.
Psychological aspects
David's refusal of the suit could be interpreted as an Emotional Design error. Although the suit was fully functional, no study had been made of its psychological impact, and David was unable to create an emotional link to the suit. For months it stayed attached to David's environment, but he never got any closer to it.
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. On certain occasions, he refused to talk to any nurse and spread his own excrement all over the bubble.
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.
His doctors, Murphy, Feigin and Shearer, suggested to place him on a regime of gamma globulin and antibiotics and remove him from the bubble, but since that almost certainly would have condemned him to death, his parents refused. Then 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. The first person he ever hugged was his nurse and old friend, Mrs. Murphy. She decided to open the window so he would have a chance of seeing the blue sky and maybe feel a breath of fresh air. But she cried, all they saw was a concrete wall that stood for the bleakness of the future situation.
David died 15 days later of Burkitt's lymphoma, caused by an unscreened virus, Epstein-Barr, in his newly-transplanted bone marrow.
Impact on scientific ethics
David's life coincided with the birth of gene therapy. At the time, the approach of Vetter's doctors was to proceed with conception and address contingencies as they appeared. Subsequently, most genetic diseases were found to be incurable with then-current technology. Medical philosophy changed to prefer early recognition and prevention of genetic disease.
Impact on popular culture
David's story has directly inspired at least two films. The first, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, was a low budget 1976 made-for-TV film starring Welcome Back, Kotter star John Travolta. David was named, and was a normal teenager except that he went to school in a special suit. In the end he found a girlfriend and simply decided to step out of his bubble and to run away with her, riding a horse into the sunset, presumably to have some fun and a certain death. David actually saw the movie and laughed at how Travolta could leave the bubble with the suit.
The second film, Bubble Boy, was a light comedy made in 2001. The television series Seinfeld also had an episode which made light of Vetter's situation, entitled "The Bubble Boy".
The song "The Boy in the Bubble" from Paul Simon's Graceland album takes its title from David's popular nickname in the media.
David’s story had a more subtle impact on popular culture. Born in an age of microwave dinners, widespread use of antibiotics, and relatively germ-free urban life, he became an icon of the artificiality of modern life. David's story thus strikes vague resonances with many people who may not remember his name or the details of his case.
External links
- 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