Students Deal With Toughest Choices

Eleven-year-old Connie Iraheta stood in front of the hospital bed pondering a life or death decision. A man, pale and still, lay covered by a gray sheet. His destiny rested in Connie’s hands.

The sixth-grader read the patient’s diagnosis with intensity, her eyes carefully scanning each detail. She quietly mouthed each word.

“John Smith, 35-year-old comatose patient. Doctors believe he will never regain consciousness. . . . Should the tubes carrying food and water be removed, allowing him to die?”

Connie’s decision was quick and final.

“I vote no,” she said, slapping the appropriate button on the voting machine. “I don’t want him to die.”

Determining the mannequin’s fate was one of many choices that Connie and her classmates from Shenandoah Elementary School in Culver City made on Friday while visiting the California Museum of Science and Industry’s new exhibit, “Designer Genes: Sizing up Bioethics.”

Designed to introduce students to complex decisions brought about by advancements in modern medicine, the exhibit includes hands-on displays that require participants to think about bioethical issues and then vote on what should be done: Who should receive scarce organs needed for transplants? Should parents give their children growth hormones to make them taller?

Although the scenarios in the exhibit are make-believe, the children may one day actually have to face such perplexing problems, sponsors of the exhibit say.

“They need to know and hopefully understand that everything you do involves decisions and many of these decisions involve conflicts that individuals and societies have to solve,” said Dr. Patrick Robbie, a Kaiser Permanente neonatologist who has done extensive research on bioethics, who was on hand to answer students’ questions. Kaiser Permanente sponsors the exhibit, which opened Jan. 19 and will run until March 17.

Diane Perlow, curator of exhibits at the museum, said children respond to the questions very differently than adults.

“Life is precious to them,” she said, adding that the students feel that “we have to maintain it at all costs.”

The students seemed less inclined to think of issues such as quality of life and health-care costs, she added.

But the voting results show that young people can be just as divided on the issues as adults.

Students who viewed the display at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Oakland also wrestled with “John’s” fate. While 8,947 said the tubes should be removed, allowing him to die, 5,075 voted against removing them.

There was no consensus from Shenandoah students.

Twelve-year-old Kavita Maharaj voted to remove the tubes.

“He can’t even do anything,” she said. “He’s like a living dead body.”

But Danny Walker, 11, said the tubes should be taken out only “if he never wakes up.”

He suggested that the family wait though, for “like two months,” before removing them.

While some wrestled over “John’s” fate, others tackled the issue of genetic choices.

Students compared their size to cut-outs of the world’s tallest and shortest people, then climbed on top to see how it would feel to be as tall as the tallest person.

“I wish I was that tall when I played basketball,” said Arthur Cooney, 12, adding that he could make a lot of money.

But Steven Jones, a diminutive classmate, said that even if given the opportunity he would not alter his height.

And, although many of his classmates tower over him, Steven said he was against giving a child growth hormones to make him taller.

“I just like people to be the way they are,” he explained.