The Boy In The Bubble is a children's novel written by Ian Strachan and published in 1993. The novel follows the story of Adam, a child born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), and lived his life in an oxygen tent to prevent him from falling ill, and a schoolgirl named Anne who chooses to base her school project on Adam. The novel won the Red House Children's Book Award and was the 1994 Lancashire Book of the Year. Plot summary The story follows Anne, a girl who while coming home from school one day meets Adam, who suffers from SCID. Due to his illness, Adam has no functional immune system, and must be shielded from the world in a plastic oxygen tent lest he becomes deathly ill. Anne visits Adam frequently and their relationship develops. The two become romantically involved, but Adam worries he is cheating Anne out of a more fulfilling relationship, as he cannot leave his oxygen tent. He expresses his concern to Anne, who misunderstands and breaks up with Adam, thinking he has lost interest in her. Anne starts seeing someone else but realizes she misses Adam and goes to his house to apologize. When Anne arrives, Adam's mother informs her that Adam is undergoing a bone marrow transplant, a procedure that will strengthen his immune system if successful, but if unsuccessful, may be fatal. After the operation, Adam is able to live outside his sterilized bubble and embrace Anne and his family, but two weeks after Christmas, Adam dies. Background SCID, abbreviated for severe combined immunodeficiency and dubbed 'bubble boy disease' is a birth defect where the newborn lacks T- and B-lymphocyte systems. This lack of immune cells causes even common infections to be frequent, often times severe and deadly. Weakened strains of bacteria and viruses used in vaccines are also ineffective and dangerous to patients with SCID due to lack of immune cells to combat the pathogens. The term 'bubble boy disease' is derived from the 1970's and 1980's when the story of David Vetter, a child with SCID, lived within a sterile containment for 12 years. Today, SCID is curable upon early diagnosis. SCID could be cured through a stem cell transplant, otherwise known as a bone marrow transplant. Stem cells from a healthy individual could be used to morph into immune cells the patient lacks, and transfused into the patient's bloodstream so the