# Were AIDS patients ever considered for "boy in the plastic bubble" treatment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 2, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612 "2008-08-02T16:42:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/1 "2008-08-02T16:42:01Z")
As a kid I remember well the made for TV movie, [The Boy in the Plastic Bubble](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_in_the_Plastic_Bubble). Summary: > [@](#): > > The film centers on the life of Tod Lubitch, who was born with an improperly functioning immune system. This means that contact with unfiltered air may kill him, so he must live out his life in incubator conditions. He lives with his parents, since they decided to move him from the hospital where he was being kept as a boy. He is constricted to staying in his room all his life, where he eats, learns, reads and exercises, while being protected from the outside world by various coverings. > > As Tod grows up, he wishes to see more of the outside world and meet regular people his age. He is enrolled at the local school after being equipped with suitable protective clothing, similar in style to an astronaut’s suit. A few years later when we started hearing about this disease that compromised people’s immune systems, I thought, “oh, like the boy in the plastic bubble”. Subsequently, though, I never heard of any proposals to protect AIDS patients that way. Were there? Why wouldn’t it have worked? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/2 "2008-08-02T16:51:39Z")
It wouldn’t have worked because normal people pick up various bacteria, virus, and fungi on and in our bodies that it is impractical or impossible to get rid of. For example, Mr. Lubitch probably was never in contact with either herpes, cytomegalovirus (CMV), or toxoplasmosis. Herpes viruses of various kinds take up permanent residence in the nervous system where, fortunately for us, it usually remains dormant but when it doesn’t we get things like cold sores and shingles. I’m not sure where CMV hides out, but it’s another virus that goes dormant and hides. Toxoplamosis hides out in the brain - there’s no way to get rid of it - and usually does no damage in people with healthy immune systems but in HIV it can wreck all sorts of havoc, but there’s no way to remove it from where it hides. Basically, by the time we’re adults we have all sorts of vermin hiding in the attic, walls, and basement of our bodies. Put us in a sterile bubble and it doesn’ t matter, we’re already carrying enough nastiness inside to be overwhelmed. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/3 "2008-08-02T16:54:17Z")
[The Master Speaks](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_372.html) ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/4 "2008-08-02T17:02:56Z")
[QUOTE=Broomstick] It wouldn’t have worked because normal people pick up various bacteria, virus, and fungi on and in our bodies that it is impractical or impossible to get rid of. For example, Mr. Lubitch probably was never in contact with either herpes, cytomegalovirus (CMV), or toxoplasmosis. [/QUOTE] Actually, David, the boy the movie was based on, was killed by a herpes virus eventually. His sister’s bone marrow, which was transplanted into him, had undetected Epstein-Barr viruses in it, which in his system rapidly spread, multiplied and caused gazillions of cancerous tumors. He was born into a sterile cocoon, and then placed into his bubble within minutes. AIDS patients are, as \*\*Broomstick \*\*says, already harboring tons of immune challenges, and you can’t sterilize people. Well…wait…you know what I mean! ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/5 "2008-08-02T17:07:40Z")
How do they go to the bathroom in a plastic bubble? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/6 "2008-08-02T17:21:50Z")
[QUOTE=Freudian Slit] How do they go to the bathroom in a plastic bubble? [/QUOTE] The bubble is (was) large. Considering that David’s bubble had a television set, books, and even a playroom in it, I don’t think a john would be a problem. It’s not like nothing went in, ever. It just had to be sterilized first. Wastes could be removed via the same ports that items went in. But I’ll be honest, I don’t remember the exact mechanisms they used. It’s been a long time since I was obsessed with his story as a kid. It’s a really horrific “Doctors playing God” story, IMHO. They told this couple, knowing the boy would have this condition, to conceive and bear this baby so that they could experiment on him and get famous. Sure, they hoped to find a cure with all that Federal grant money, but they never considered what they’d do if they didn’t. And before he was 10, they (the original doctors) just washed their hands of him and moved on to other projects. He was depressed and “acted out” all the time - he once smeared the inside of his bubble with feces, and once he started poking holes in it with a hypodermic someone left inside. He hated his bubble, hated his doctors and his parents for making him live in it. All he wanted was a can of Coke (because he’d seen it on his television) and by the time he was (dying) out of the bubble, they wouldn’t even give him that, in order to protect their precious “medical investigations”. (They had, in their defense, tried giving him a Coke in the bubble, but the sterilization procedure ruined the taste, apparently.) ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/7 "2008-08-02T17:44:19Z")
Even if this were feasible for HIV+ people, you’d need 40,000 new bubbles every year in the U.S. alone. Fortunately, interventions for HIV+ pregnant women and newborns have reduced the rate of mother-to-child transmission to almost nothing in post-industrial countries. ---
**Author:** ![B\_A\_Bay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@B\_A\_Bay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B_A_Bay)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2008, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/8 "2008-08-03T16:43:57Z")
[QUOTE=susan] Even if this were feasible for HIV+ people, you’d need 40,000 new bubbles every year in the U.S. alone. Fortunately, interventions for HIV+ pregnant women and newborns have reduced the rate of mother-to-child transmission to almost nothing in post-industrial countries. [/QUOTE] Then you could have an entire Bubble City, or a dome like in “the Simspons Movie” ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/9 "2008-08-03T17:21:07Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] (They had, in their defense, tried giving him a Coke in the bubble, but the sterilization procedure ruined the taste, apparently.) [/QUOTE] \ Wha? there are cold sterilizing agents, and I would think that the coke liquid in an unopened can would be as sterile as pretty much anything else. Why coudnt they use a quaternary solution on the outside of the can to sterilize the can? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2008, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/10 "2008-08-03T22:38:26Z")
[QUOTE=aruvqan] \ Wha? there are cold sterilizing agents, and I would think that the coke liquid in an unopened can would be as sterile as pretty much anything else. Why coudnt they use a quaternary solution on the outside of the can to sterilize the can? [/QUOTE] Dunno. What they used at the time for pretty much anything going into the bubble was heated ethylene oxide gas, then they let the object offgas for about a week before introducing it into the bubble. I don’t remember if they did anything to the actual liquid itself or not. Remember that this was in the seventies. Maybe disinfectants have gotten better? Maybe “sterile” for David meant something more rigorous than it would for you or I? ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2008, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-aids-patients-ever-considered-for-boy-in-the-plastic-bubble-treatment/458612/11 "2008-08-04T01:11:28Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Dunno. What they used at the time for pretty much anything going into the bubble was heated ethylene oxide gas, then they let the object offgas for about a week before introducing it into the bubble. I don’t remember if they did anything to the actual liquid itself or not. Remember that this was in the seventies. Maybe disinfectants have gotten better? Maybe “sterile” for David meant something more rigorous than it would for you or I? [/QUOTE] if a liquid isnt sterile then it would grow nasties that can be harmful while sitting on the shelf waiting to be bought … that is the reason when you home can stuff it has to be poured into a sterile conainer and then heated long enough at a proper temperature to sterilize the contents … hells bells, you could probably drop a coke can into a bucket of bleach and leave it for a couple of hours, then set it somewhere to evaporate dry, then rinse with sterile distilled water. Heck, we have a few bags of sterile saline solution that get used as an emergency eyewash [wouldnt try usinging them as an IV, they are out of date but for external use they are just fine] that could be used to rinse off the outsides of a can in a glove box situation…