Also known as the Boy in the Bubble Disease, it’s a disorder in which individuals are born without an effective immune system.
The disease was made famous by virtue of the 1976 film, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, a story inspired by the lives of David Vetter and Ted deVita. In the movie, a boy is forced to live in plastic isolation for fear of exposure to unfiltered air and the introduction of life-threatening pathogens. In real life, Vetter lived in this condition for 13 years, but he died in 1984 following an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant (a failed attempt to help him fight infections).
And indeed, the disorder is caused by a number of genes, including those that cause defects in both T and B cell responses — which has a downstream negative effect on the production of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). SCID is also thought to arise due to the lack of adenosine deaminase (ADA). Interestingly, SCID was the first human illness treated by human gene therapy in 1990, and is increasingly being used to treat children. Image: Baylor College of Medicine Archives.