Altering the age of a patient in a problem-based curriculum should encourage students to explore ethical issues related to human development. To assess the influence of a patient's age on problem-based tutorial discussion, the relevant discussion categories and the numbers of age-related discussions were compared. Subjects were four groups of six students in the undergraduate problem-based learning medical curriculum of a Canadian university. Groups, led by experienced clinical tutors, studied one of three versions of a problem, with the major difference being the patient's age. Less than 3% of the total tutorial time was devoted to age-related discussion and very few age-related objectives were achieved. Discussions were similar regardless of the patient's age, in that all emphasized the biological nature of the disease. Explanations are offered for why these results differ from previous research. (Contains nine references and two tables.) (SLD)