What is Severe Combined Immunofeficiency (SCID)?

Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) may be best known from news stories and a movie in the 1980s about David, the Boy in the Bubble, who was born without a working immune system. Caused by defects in any of several possible genes, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency  makes those affected highly susceptible to life-threatening infections by viruses, bacteria and fungi. Because David's brother had died of the disease, doctors immediately placed him into a plastic isolation unit to protect him from infections. He lived in such isolators for nearly 13 years. David died in 1984 following an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant, an attempt to provide him with the capacity to fight infections on his own and thus free him from the bubble.