Death
Approximately $1.3 million was spent on David's care, but scientific study failed to produce a true "cure" and no donor match had been identified. Physicians expressed concern that, as a teenager, David could become unpredictable and uncontrollable. Those concerns and advances in unmatched bone marrow operations led the medical team to recommend, and the family to decide to attempt, an unmatched bone marrow transplant through intravenous lines running into the bubble. The transplant operation went well, and produced hopes that he would be able to leave the chamber. A few months later, however, David became ill, for the first time in his life, with diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting and intestinal bleeding. The symptoms were so severe that he had to be taken out of the chamber for treatment.
He died 15 days later on February 22, 1984, from Burkitt's lymphoma, aged 12. The autopsy revealed that the donor bone marrow contained traces of a dormant virus, Epstein-Barr, which had been undetectable in the pre-transplant screening. Once transplanted, the virus spread and produced hundreds of cancerous tumors.
Read more about this topic: David Vetter
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law”
—Charles Olson (1910–1970)
“Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)