The ‘boy in the bubble’ who captivated the world

It is one of Houston’s signature stories: The cute little boy who lived nearly his whole life inside a series of sterile plastic bubbles, waiting for a cure for his fatal immune disease that, tragically, never came.

David Vetter – he was identified only as David at the time – was “the boy in the bubble,” the Texas Medical Center’s most famous patient from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. As a captivated public watched, he grew up isolated from germs and human touch before dying, at age 12, after the failure of an experimental bone marrow transplant.

“David’s life was a compelling human interest story that tugged at hearts year after year,” said James Jones, a former University of Houston historian writing a book on the boy. “Over time, people around the world came to care deeply about his well-being, admiring his courage and pluck and hoping against hope science would find a cure for the mysterious disease that kept him incarcerated and denied a normal childhood.”

He left a legacy of medical advances and vexing ethical questions.

It is little wonder, given the astonishing spectacle that was David’s life. From infancy on, he could be touched only by neophene gloves sticking through the walls of his NASA-designed bubbles. Everything he touched had to be sterilized with peracetic acid and placed inside steel capsules inserted through a system of air locks. His mother was able to kiss him for the first time only when he came out of the bubble to die.

No child had ever been reared in such a cocoon. No child likely ever will again.

The cause of David’s isolation was an inherited condition called severe combined immunodeficiency in which patients lack the white blood cells that fight infection, meaning any germ is a potential killer. It afflicts 40 to 80 babies every year in the United States and is fatal without treatment. In September 1971, when David was born, there was no treatment.

In effect, David became a living experiment. At the time, his story was depicted as one of technological triumph and valiant effort that gave his family and him 12 years together. Since then, many ethicists have argued it was hubris, a classic example of doctors promising more than medicine could deliver, creating an unacceptable quality of life that took a toll on his emotional well-being.

The medical legacy is less open to debate. David contributed enormously to a better understanding of clinical immunology, doctors say, an understanding that has resulted in better treatment for many diseases involving the immune system.

“His life, however short or restricted, helped scientists learn more about primary immunodeficiencies so that they could help other infants with SCID,” Carol Ann Demaret, David’s mother, wrote in a 2014 account of the ordeal. “That’s given our family enormous comfort over the years and helped us manage our great sorrow.”

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