A curious, energetic, smart, outgoing and thoughtful little boy.

That’s how family, friends and teachers say they will remember 5-year-old Thomas Cooper who tragically died inside a hyperbaric chamber at a medical facility in Troy, Michigan, last month.

The descriptions form part of a heartfelt obituary written about Cooper ahead of a memorial visitation held on Thursday, about two weeks after he died. 

Cooper was receiving treatment inside a chamber, a pressurized container containing 100% oxygen, when it suddenly exploded at The Oxford Center at 165 Kirts Blvd.

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Police and fire officials said he was dead inside the chamber when they arrived on the scene, while his mother Annie, who was also inside the room, suffered injuries to her arm.

Cooper, who was in preschool, was always on the move and loved looking out for his younger brother, who was his best friend, according to the obituary.

"His favorite thing to do was play Minecraft on his Nintendo Switch, as he loved to show his Mommy and Daddy the things he could create," the tribute reads.

"His favorite activities were running, jumping, rolling and stomping … He wanted to grow up to be a chef because that meant he could ‘cook with Mommy and Daddy and stay with them forever.’"

The boy was receiving treatment for sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder at the Oxford Center, James Harrington, an attorney for the family told NBC Washington. 

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The chambers are used to provide Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) and a typical chamber can hold one person. It requires the patient to lie down in the tube-shaped device that looks like an MRI machine and breathe the oxygen. A hyperbaric chamber contains up to three times the amount of oxygen than a normal room.

Harrington said the boy’s parents were hopeful the services would improve his quality of life. 

"This wasn’t some type of lifesaving measure that was absolutely needed," Harrington told the outlet. "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."

"Annie was trying to help her child as any parent would — as good parents do."

Harrington, who is a managing partner of Fieger Law in Southfield, Michigan, said the boy had received multiple sessions of hyperbaric oxygen therapy at the center before tragedy struck.

It’s unclear what caused the chamber to explode. The family intends on filing a lawsuit to prevent a similar incident from taking place again, Harrington said, adding that the boy’s parents are "absolutely devastated."

The obituary also mentions that Cooper loved to make art and was constantly curious about the world around him and liked to know how things worked.

"At night, he liked to listen to audiobooks as he tried to go to sleep, with some of his favorites being Yoto Daily, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach," the obituary reads.

As well as being used to tackle sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the devices are also used to treat a variety of other health problems, including carbon monoxide poisoning, diabetic foot ulcers, anemia, infection of the skin and bone and vision loss.

Such devices require FDA clearance to ensure that they are approved to be used as intended and are safe and effective.

HBOY is also well known for treating scuba and deep-sea divers affected by the rapid change in pressure around them, according to the FDA. 

In a statement to the Detroit Free Press immediately after the incident, The Oxford Center spokesperson Andrew Kistner wrote that the cause of the explosion is unknown.

"As law enforcement officials have shared, at our location in Troy, Michigan this morning, a fire started inside of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. The child being treated in that chamber did not survive and the child’s mother was injured," the statement reads.

"The safety and wellbeing of the children we serve is our highest priority. Nothing like this has happened in our more than 15 years of providing this type of therapy. We… will participate in all of the investigations that now need to take place."

The location is temporarily closed while authorities investigate the deadly incident, NBC Washington reported. No charges have been filed, per the outlet citing police. 

In May 2009, an explosion of a pressurized oxygen chamber killed a 4-year-old and his 62-year-old grandmother. Authorities said a blast dislodged a tube attached to the hyperbaric chamber, which resulted in an explosion and flash fire, according to CBS.

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A U.S. startup company is reportedly offering wealthy couples the chance to screen their embryos for IQ and other favorable genetic traits, which has raised ethical concerns.

Heliospect Genomics is charging up to $50,000 to test 100 embryos and claims their technology can help couples undergoing IVF pick children with IQ scores six points higher or more over babies conceived naturally, The Guardian reports. 

The company has already worked with more than a dozen couples, undercover video footage reviewed by the outlet reveals. 

"Everyone can have all the children they want, and they can have children that are basically disease-free, smart, healthy; it’s going to be great," CEO Michael Christensen said on a video call in November 2023, according to the report. The call was recorded by an undercover researcher for Hope Not Hate, an antifascist group that works to "expose and oppose far-right extremism." 

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On the call, Heliospect employees reportedly walk prospective parents through the experimental genetic selection techniques advertised by the company. One employee explained how couples could use polygenic scoring to rank up to 100 embryos based on "IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants," including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness, according to The Guardian.

Heliospect says its prediction tools use data from UK Biobank, a publicly funded genetic repository with half a million British volunteers. The database permits approved researchers and scientists around the world to access it for "health-related research that is in the public interest." 

United Kingdom law prohibits parents from selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ, but the practice is currently legal in the U.S., even if the technology is not yet commercially available. 

Expert geneticists and bioethicists told The Guardian the prospect of selecting embryos for favorable genetic traits is ethically questionable since it could reinforce the idea of "superior" and "inferior" genetics. Hope Not Hate went further in its own reporting, tying a handful of Heliospect employees to people and publications that have purportedly promoted so-called scientific racism, or the contested belief that human races have innately different levels of physical, intellectual and moral development determined by their genetics.

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Katie Hasson, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society in California, warned in comments to The Guardian that embryo selection technology could mainstream "the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes."

Heliospect Genomics did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

Heliospect managers told The Guardian the U.S.-based company operates within the bounds of all applicable law and regulations. The company said it is currently in "stealth mode" and is still developing its services before a planned public launch. They added that couples who have screened fewer embryos were charged around $4,000 for the service. 

On the calls recorded by Hope Not Hate, Heliospect's team described how its "polygenic scoring" service uses algorithms to analyze the genetic data given by parents to predict the specific traits of their individual embryos. The company does not offer IVF services, according to The Guardian.

Christensen presented an ambitious vision for how the technology could develop, even suggesting that "lab-grown eggs would allow couples to create embryos on an industrial scale – a thousand, or even a million – from which an elite selection could be handpicked," the report said.

According to The Guardian, he suggested that future technology might be able to screen for personality types, including what he referred to as "dark triad" traits, namely machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.

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"Beauty is something lots of people actually ask about," he reportedly added.

Heliospect told The Guardian it does not condone industrial-scale egg or embryo production or elite selection and that it does not plan to offer personality screening services.

Among Heliospect's senior staff is Jonathan Anomaly, a controversial academic who has defended so-called "liberal eugenics," or the idea that parents should use genetic technology to enhance their children's prospects. 

Anomaly told The Guardian that as a professor of philosophy, he has published provocative articles intended to stimulate debate and that "liberal eugenics" was an accepted term by bioethicists.

Records show Heliospect gained access to UK Biobank's data in June 2023. In its application, the company said it planned to use advanced techniques to improve the prediction of "complex traits." But Heliospect did not disclose screening embryos as an intended commercial application or mention IQ, The Guardian reported.

UK Biobank told the outlet Heliospect's use of its data appeared to be "entirely consistent with our access conditions." 

Experts suggested to The Guardian that restrictions on access to databases like UK Biobank may need to be strengthened in light of the ethical concerns around embryo screening.

"UK Biobank, and the UK government, may want to think harder about whether it needs to impose some new restrictions," said professor Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford University.

Heliospect emphasized that its use of UK Biobank data is lawful and complies with relevant regulations. The company told The Guardian it supports addressing concerns about preimplantation embryonic screening through public education, policy discussions and properly informed debates about the technology, which it strongly believed had the potential to help people.

A federal judge in Washington on Friday handed Elon Musk's government efficiency team a win by declining a request to temporarily block it from accessing sensitive data from at least three federal agencies.

Unions and nonprofits attempted to stop Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing records at the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

U.S. District Judge John Bates wrote in an opinion that the government was likely correct in categorizing DOGE as an agency, thereby allowing it to detail its staff to other government departments. 

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However, Bates called his finding a "close question," noting that the government did not want DOGE to be considered an agency for purposes of another federal law, which would subject it to open records requests.

Bates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said DOGE was a "Goldilocks entity: not an agency when it is burdensome but an agency when it is convenient."

"Plaintiffs have not shown a substantial likelihood that [DOGE] is not an agency. If that is so, [DOGE] may detail its employees to other agencies consistent with the Economy Act," he wrote in part.

The newly minted agency, a key promise of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, is aggressively slashing government waste when it comes to government spending. It was created via executive order and is a temporary organization within the White House that will spend 18 months carrying out its mission.

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The Justice Department has argued that the DOGE personnel in question are "detailed" U.S. government employees who have access to the information under provisions of the Economy Act.

Musk hailed the decision by reposting the news on X with the caption: "LFG," an abbreviation for "Let’s f---ing go." 

Judge Bates suggested earlier Friday that DOGE's creation and its hierarchy were "odd," noting that it "was created in a way to get it out of OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and instead answering to the chief of staff of the president."

DOGE "took great effort to avoid being an agency, but in this case, you're an agency," he said of DOGE. "It just seems to strain credulity." 

Attorneys for unions representing Labor Department employees argued during last week's hearing that, absent court intervention, DOGE could access protected agency information, including the financial and medical records of millions of Americans, as well as employee safety and workplace complaints.

The plaintiffs noted that Labor Department systems contain sensitive information about investigations into Musk-owned companies Tesla and SpaceX, as well as information about trade secrets of competing companies, sparking concerns about Elon Musk's possible access to the information.

Attorney Mark Samburg argued that allowing DOGE access to this information could have a "chilling effect" on new employees coming forward, due to fear of unlawful disclosure or retaliation.

"The sensitive information of millions of people is currently at imminent risk of unlawful disclosure," Samburg said.

The plaintiffs had urged Judge Bates to grant a temporary request to block DOGE's access to the information, which they said would "force the agency to implement a more thoughtful process."

Separately, on Friday, a federal judge extended a temporary order blocking DOGE from accessing payment systems within the Treasury Department.

That extension came after 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit claiming DOGE illegally accessed the Treasury Department’s central payment system at the Trump administration’s behest.  

Fox News’ Brie Stimson and Reuters contributed to this report.