The Boy in the Plastic Bubble movie was on cable the other night and I forced myself to watch it. Mostly because I wanted to see if it was as bad as I remembered it to be.
It was.
So, at the end of the movie he walks from his human habitrail and rides off into the sunset with his snooty girlfriend.
They say it’s a true story. When I do a search on his name I find nothing about him… anywhere. I find lots about the movie, but nothing on him personaly.
Does anyone know anything about this guy? Did he live to a ripe old age? Did he fall off the horse and crack open his head? Or did Aaron Spelling lie to me and it’s not a real person after all?
Ok, I searched on google for* “immune system” bubble boy health* and discovered his name was really David Vetter. From there, I found this site which states:
I was going to say that George punctured his bubble while arguing over a Trivial Pursuit answer (“the moops”), but then I remembered hearing about that kid when I was little.
I would have made the same decision his parents did. I’d much prefer to die trying to live a normal life, rather than to live confined in a plastic biosphere all my life. That would be horrible. What really weirded me out about the story when I first heard it was that he was almost exactly a year younger than me, and at 10 or 11 years old, it was a really disturbing thought that a kid my age could have a terminal disease like that.
I think, Joe_Cool, they no longer put people in bubbles when they’re born with compromised immune systems. The expense is too high and the quality of life is too low. Plus, we have remedies we didn’t have before, like (more effective) bone marrow transplants.
Yeah, but can they put people in bubbles when they are allergic to everything on the planet and have the coordination of a peanut? I could use one of those. At least one of those lovely suits. Maybe in a mauve