This story received wide publicity and media coverage, there has been and still is a lot of discussion about the ethics and expediency of what happened, but the fact remains: David Vetter spent 12 years of his life in a sterile plastic bubble and died without touching the living world.
But first things first…
Before the birth of David
David Vetter, whose case history, oddly enough, began long before his birth, will become the hero of our article. What happened before his birth and what are the reasons for his unusual birth?
The story began in the 1960s in Houston, Texas, USA, when David Joseph Vetter Jr. and his wife Carroll Ann had a daughter, Catherine. Parents were incredibly happy about the birth of a lovely daughter, but … an heir was needed. Some time later, a boy was born, David, but the doctors immediately after birth made a terrible diagnosis: a defect in the thymus gland, which impeded the functioning of the immune system. The boy died at the age of 7 months.
Parents were warned that with a probability of more than 90%, their subsequent children will be born with similar pathologies. But the desire to give birth to a boy, an heir, was stronger than medical contraindications.
Doctors of the Texas clinic, where the couple were observed, proposed an experiment: give birth to a baby, place it in a special bubble, which will become a barrier to the penetration of microbes and viruses into the baby's body, and transplant the bone marrow tissue of a healthy older sister to it at the right age. With a high degree of probability this will provide a cure for the patient.
Parents decided on a third pregnancy.
Medical error
In 1971, David Phillip Vetter was born. As expected, the boy was born sick. His rare genetic disease is severe combined immunodeficiency (this disease is akin to AIDS, but almost leaves the patient no chance: the slightest virus can kill in a matter of days).
Vetter David was placed in a specially equipped bubble to spend the first years of his life in it - until the moment when a rescue operation is possible.
But a problem arose for which the doctors were not ready: the brain tissues of the brother and sister were incompatible. The operation was not possible. So, the only way to save his life is to not let it go beyond the plastic bubble.
David Vetter - a boy in a plastic bubble
That is what he was called in the press. The story received wide publicity. For doctors, the boy, Vetter David, became an opportunity to study in detail a rare disease and monitor an unprecedented experiment. And along with the medical staff, the whole world followed the boy’s life. The state allocated money for the development of the experiment so that doctors had the opportunity to invent a medicine.
How was the childhood of a little boy, placed in a plastic bubble?
Sterile childhood
There is only one way to save a patient’s life with combined immunodeficiency - to prevent any kind of microbes or viruses from entering his body. Therefore, all baby food products were subjected to special processing and served using certain mechanisms.
All items that the baby touched were sterile. Toys and books went through a special treatment before they hit the bubble. It was possible to touch David only with the help of a special glove (several of these gloves were mounted in the walls of the bubble).
Communication with the outside world, even with parents, was difficult: the ventilation system of the plastic chamber worked very noisily, and it was necessary to shout it out.
So David Vetter spent the first years of his life (photo attached). Without the warmth of maternal hands, without the aroma of children's treats, without communicating with other children …
Moving home
The boy was growing up. Together with him grew his "house". While he still did not understand that his childhood was not like everyone else. He simply looked at people in white coats through transparent plastic walls. Parents tried to make his life as “ordinary” as possible: they read books, played (as much as possible), developed and educated. The child psychologist Mary worked with the boy: it was she who, like no one else, was able to understand the child and find a common language with him.
When David turned 3 years old, the bubble was connected to a small, also sterile, camera - an arena for games. The boy refused to go in for a very long time (although this day was supposed to be special, even a special photographer came to cover this event in the press), and only Mary could persuade him.
As they grow older, parents increasingly took their son home - first for a few days, then for longer periods. Thanks to good financing, the houses were able to build the same bubble, and the boy was transported using special equipment.
Character and relationship with family
Of course, the older boy could not help but realize that his life was not like that of others. After he once pierced the bladder with a syringe, his parents told him why he lives that way, what microbes are, and what will happen if David leaves his “house”. Since then, David has had nightmares: hordes of germs trying to kill him.
Lack of communication and awareness of their own doom affected the character. Attacks of rage and anger began to appear, like a protest of a small soul against the injustice of the world in which a child was forced to live.
Parents did everything so that peers would go to their son. Vetter David, in the presence of strangers, showed himself a polite and well-mannered boy, but it was more like a mask - for strangers, for those who would never understand what was in his soul.
The relationship with my sister was mostly warm, but I could not do without children's quarrels, which sometimes struck with cruelty. David, in a fit of rage, could hit his sister through the walls of the bubble - Katherine in turn turned off the plastic camera from the power supply until the boy asked for mercy.
It has become increasingly difficult for the psychologist Mary to keep in touch with the growing boy. The transitional age was approaching - the most difficult period in the life of any person, and in the situation of David threatening to become unpredictable.
Risky operation
David's life support funding has been declining. The medicine was still not invented, and spending such an enormous amount of money in the eyes of statesmen seemed inappropriate.
Vetter David, whose life was becoming increasingly painful, began to understand the whole hopelessness of his situation. He was panicky afraid of contact with the outside world, he became a despot in his family and increasingly drove reporters and photographers from himself.
When David turned 12 years old, the doctors decided on another experiment, as they simply did not see another way out. Hoping that modern drugs would neutralize tissue incompatibility, they nevertheless underwent surgery to transplant David's bone marrow of Catherine’s sister. And again a mistake. Together with the tissues, the Epstein-Barr virus entered the boy's body. Not showing himself in the body of a healthy person, he introduced David into a coma in a matter of days.
Only a few days before death, for the first time in 12 years, was David's mother able to touch her baby’s skin without rubber gloves …
