Family Speaks Out After Boy, 5, Killed in Hyperbaric Chamber

The family of the 5-year-old boy killed in a hyperbaric chamber explosion in a suburb of Detroit last month is speaking out via a lawyer. Thomas Cooper was receiving hyperbaric oxygen therapy at the Oxford Center, an alternative medicine facility in Troy, when the tragedy occurred. "This wasn't some type of lifesaving measure that was absolutely needed," the attorney tells NBC News, explaining that Cooper was being treated in the hopes that oxygen therapy would help his sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. "It was just a mother who was trying to help her son with some conditions that he had and was promised that with these conditions and this treatment, that they would be able to help."

The Oxford Center and other, similar facilities claim hyperbaric oxygen therapy can help with those and many other disorders for which the treatment is not actually recognized by the Food & Drug Administration. Rather, the FDA has approved the therapy, which delivers 100% oxygen in a pressurized chamber, for conditions including decompression sickness in scuba divers, carbon monoxide poisoning, and certain injuries and burns. The center has said little publicly about the tragedy, other than it is cooperating with authorities to determine what went wrong, which is not yet clear. Cooper's mother was in the room with him when the fire first started, and was burned on her arms as she tried to save her son from the flames, the attorney says. He says a lawsuit will be filed. Read more at NBC. (Cooper's obituary is here, and a GoFundMe campaign for his family is here.)