This story was widely publicized and covered in the media, there were and still are many discussions about the ethics and expediency of what happened, but the fact remains: David Vetter -Eng.) He spent 12 years of his life in a sterile plastic bladder and died without touching the "living" world.
But first things first…
Before David was born
David Vetter, whose medical history, oddly enough, began long before his birth, will become the hero of our article. What was 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, Caroll Ann, had a daughter, Katherine. Parents were incredibly happy about the birth of a lovely daughter, but … an heir was needed. After some time, a boy, David, was born, but doctors immediately after birth made a terrible diagnosis: a thymus defect that interfered with the immune system. The boy died at the age of 7 months.
Parents were warned that with a probability of over 90% their future children would be born with similar pathologies. But desireto give birth to a boy, an heir, turned out to be stronger than medical contraindications.
Doctors at the Texas clinic, where the couple was observed, proposed an experiment: to give birth to a child, place it in a special bubble that will become a barrier to the penetration of microbes and viruses into the baby’s body, and upon reaching the desired age, transplant bone marrow tissue from a he althy older sister to him. With a high degree of probability, this will ensure the cure of the patient.
Parents decide on a third pregnancy.
Medical error
David Phillip Vetter was born in 1971. As expected, the boy was born sick. His rare genetic disease is severe combined immunodeficiency (this disease is similar to AIDS, but leaves the patient practically no chance: the slightest virus can kill in a matter of days).
Vetter David was placed in a specially equipped bladder to spend the first years of his life in it until life-saving surgery is possible.
But there was a problem for which the doctors were not ready: the brain tissue of the brother and sister were incompatible. The operation proved impossible. So the only way to keep him alive is to keep him inside the plastic bubble.
David Vetter - the boy in the plastic bubble
That's what the press called him. The story received wide publicity. For doctors, the boy Vetter David was an opportunity to study a rare disease in detail and follow an unprecedented experiment. And together with the medical staff for lifethe whole world followed the boy. The state allocated money for the development of the experiment so that doctors could 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 the life of a patient with combined immunodeficiency - to prevent any type of microbes or viruses from entering his body. Therefore, all the child's food was subjected to special processing and served using certain mechanisms.
All items the baby touched were sterile. Toys and books were specially treated before entering the bubble. It was only possible to touch David with a special glove (several of these gloves were built into the walls of the bladder).
Communication with the outside world, even with parents, was difficult: the ventilation system of the plastic chamber was very noisy, and it was necessary to shout over it.
This is how David Vetter spent the first years of his life (photo attached). Without the warmth of mother's hands, without the scent of children's treats, without contact with other children…
Moving home
The boy grew up. Together with him, his "house" also grew. While he still did not understand that his childhood was not like everyone else's. I just looked at people in white coats through transparent plastic walls. His parents tried to make his life as "ordinary" as possible: they read books, played (as far aswas possible), developed and trained. Child psychologist Mary worked with the boy: it was she who, like no one else, managed to understand the child and find a common language with him.
When David was 3 years old, the bubble was connected to a small, also sterile, chamber - an arena for games. The boy refused to go there 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 was able to persuade him.
As they grew older, parents increasingly took their son home - first for a few days, then for longer periods. Thanks to good funding, the houses were able to build the same bubble, and transported the boy with the help of special equipment.
Character and family relationships
Of course, the grown-up boy could not but understand that his life is not the same as that of others. After he once pierced the shell of the bladder with a syringe, his parents told him why he lives the way he does, what germs are, and what will happen if David leaves his "house". Since then, David has been haunted by nightmares: hordes of germs trying to kill him.
Lack of communication and awareness of their own doom affected the character. Bouts of rage and anger began to appear - like a protest of a small soul against the injustice of the world in which the child was forced to live.
Parents did everything to ensure that peers went to their son. Vetter David, in the presence of strangers, showed himself to be a polite and well-mannered boy,but it was more of a mask - for strangers, for those who will never understand what is in his soul.
Relations with my sister were mostly warm, but not without children's quarrels, sometimes striking in cruelty. David, in a fit of rage, could hit his sister through the walls of the bubble - Katherine, in response, turned off the plastic camera from the power supply until the boy begged for mercy.
Psychologist Mary found it increasingly difficult to maintain contact with the maturing boy. Adolescence was approaching - the most difficult period in the life of any person, and in David's situation threatening to become unpredictable.
Risky operation
Funding to support David's life was declining. The cure still had not been invented, and spending such a huge amount of money in the eyes of statesmen looked inappropriate.
Vetter David, whose life became more and more painful, began to understand the hopelessness of his situation. He was terribly afraid of contact with the outside world, became a despot in his family and increasingly drove reporters and photographers away from him.
When David was 12 years old, the doctors decided on another experiment, because they simply did not see any other way out. Hoping that modern drugs would neutralize tissue incompatibility, they nevertheless performed an operation to transplant David's sister Katherine's bone marrow. And again an error. Together with the tissues, the Epstein-Barr virus entered the boy's body. Not manifesting himself in the body of a he althy person, he put David into a coma in a matter of days.
Only fora few days before his death, for the first time in 12 years, David's mother was able to touch her child's skin without rubber gloves…
Attempt to rescue or slow kill?
A child deprived of childhood… A child, even before conception, doomed to life in a plastic bubble… Born contrary to the arguments of common sense and philanthropy (hope turned out to be stronger than logic)… What motivated doctors was the desire to defeat an obviously incurable disease or the opportunity to get a “rabbit” for experiments in the face of a sick boy?
The 12-year-long debate about the ethics and humanity of the experiment continues to this day.
