It was a story that touched the world, the cute little boy who lived virtually his whole life inside a series of sterile plastic bubbles, waiting for a cure for his fatal immune disease that, tragically, never came.
Known as “the boy in the bubble,” or just David, he was the Texas Medical Center’s most famous patient from the early ’70s to the mid-’80s. As a captivated public watched, he grew up isolated from both germs and human touch before finally dying, at age 12, after the failure of a then experimental bone-marrow transplant.
The case was truly unique: Never again would a child live a life in such a cocoon. “It’s such a great human interest story, how so many people came to care about him,” says James Jones, a former University of Houston historian and author of a forthcoming book on the subject. “Most medical stories have a flash-in-the pan quality, but David’s story didn’t go away. For 12 years, thanks to news coverage around his birthday, he captured hearts worldwide.”
Today, 25 years to the day since his death, David Phillip Vetter remains one of Houston’s signature stories, his mark still felt in a legacy of vexing ethical questions and medical advances.
The ethical questions involve David’s role as a sort of living experiment. While keeping him alive was largely seen as a technological triumph and a valiant effort that gave him and his family 12 years together, some bioethicists argue it was a classic example of doctors promising more than medicine could deliver and creating an unacceptable quality of life. That quality took a toll on David’s emotional well-being.