Doctors explained that if the Vetters had another boy, there was a fifty percent likelihood that he would also be afflicted with SCID. Amniocentesis determined that the fetus was indeed male, and the Vetters, devout Catholics, decided to proceed with the pregnancy, albeit with extraordinary measures prepared for the birth.
Katherine Vetter was almost four years old when her brother David was born with an immunodeficiency disorder. The close genetic match between siblings meant that Katherine was David's best hope for a cure at the beginning and at the end of his life.
Many people cared about and cared for David Phillip Vetter during his life. He received his medical care at Texas Children's Hospital, part of the Texas Medical Center in Houston and a teaching hospital of Baylor College of Medicine.
Doctors at Texas Children's Hospital told David and Carol Ann Vetter that their second son had a 50/50 chance of being born with the same immunodeficiency that had killed their first son.
Caring for any infant or child has its challenges without having to handle him with rubber gloves through a plastic bubble. Nurses practiced diapering and holding a doll for two weeks before David Vetter was born. He never wore anything but lightweight clothing in his life, but as an infant, the small buttons were difficult to maneuver and his mother, Carol Ann Vetter, sometimes resorted to using the adhesive tabs from a disposable diaper to keep his shirt closed.
Being kept in an isolator bubble for his health held risks for David Vetter's cognitive development. His doctors knew of a recent case involving German twins kept in isolators. Those boys exhibited evidence of retardation, although some symptoms went away after they were released from their bubbles. Many worried that the twins' mental abilities were adversely affected by their time in the bubble. David was watched carefully.
In 1974 doctors at Texas Children's Hospital caring for David Vetter considered how they might help him experience life beyond the stationary isolator bubbles that protected him from the germs to which he was so susceptible. They needed engineers who understood life support systems and synthetic fabrics, who could "dock" the suit with the isolator, and who allowed no margin of error. Luckily, those engineers worked down the road at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
On October 21, 1983, David Vetter received a bone marrow transplant from his older sister Katherine. Unfortunately, Katherine's marrow was not an exact match for David's.
