UNLOCKING THE MYSTERIES; STUDENTS DISSECT CADAVER.

Byline: Teresa Jimenez Daily News Staff Writer

The Oak Park High School biology students could hear the body's ribs crack like chicken bones, but their classmates using the plier-style cutters on the cadaver Monday morning said it took some muscle to break open the body's chest.

This - the dead, white male body lying on a gurney in a typical classroom - was the culmination of a year's work for these advanced placement biology students. This is what they had anticipated. In fact, this is why some signed up for the course in the first place.

About eight of the class's 30 students served as assistants to Dr. Steven Weinstein, a general surgeon at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills who has volunteered to direct the dissection over the past four years.

After the helpers separated the skin from the rib cage and cut an opening, the class got a firsthand look at the lungs, heart, liver and other body parts they'd only seen in textbooks. Some even held the organs in their hands.

``This, what you see here, this is the liver,'' Weinstein told them after he lifted the first chest portion. The students leaned forward and stared. ``It's huge.''

``And here we have the lung,'' he said, removing tissue and fat from around the organ. ``See this dark coloring? This is probably from pollution. This is anthracosis. If you live in Los Angeles, you have this. If you live in Alaska, you probably don't. If you smoke, it's much worse.''

The dissection was much more than senior Elise Brahmer had expected - and she had been looking forward to the dissection from the start.

``It was awesome. The whole thing was awesome. I was really interested in this from the beginning, but then the class was just going on and I lost interest a little,'' Elise said. ``But now . . . you think, OK, my heart's beating. But seeing it is amazing.''

That kind of excitement in students has prompted biology teacher Winnie Litten to continue and expand the 5-year-old program. In the next few weeks, the students will also dissect the brain, the abdomen, the eye and the face - all under the guidance of different Kaiser doctors who specialize in the different areas.

The lessons give students an edge over the usual textbooks. Ryan Kalember, a senior, said he was surprised to find the heart turned a different way than he'd learned and other body parts in places he hadn't expected. ``Everything was in a different position than in the book. And all the different systems pass in different places,'' Ryan said. ``And the bones were harder than I thought they'd be.''

Jon Pokorski, a junior, said he couldn't believe the size of the heart or the size difference between the two lungs.

The hands-on work allowed Weinstein to explain those medical phenomena. A large heart usually suggests heart disease, because the organ dilates as it starts to fail, the doctor said. And a scar on the organ, which Weinstein pointed out to the class, gave proof of a heart attack.

The left lung is smaller than the right lung because there must be room for the heart, which sits to the left, Weinstein said. Then the students took a closer look. They cut off a portion of the lung to see the sponge-like vessels that hold air. They cut the heart to look at the ventricle and atria - chambers that direct blood to different parts of the body.

At the end of class, students didn't want to leave the room. They hovered around the gurney to get a closer look.

``I was kind of scared at first,'' said Michelle Frankson, a senior. ``But it was really neat to actually see it, to see the heart and everything.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--ran in SIMI and CONEJO editions only--color) Students at Oak Park High cut open a cadaver with the help of general surgeon Steven Weinstein on Monday.

(2--ran in CONEJO edition only--color) Andy Tsing, the father of a student, leans over to get a better look at the classroom dissection in Agoura.

Jeremy Greene/Special to the Daily News