coming up, ongoing ethical debate about the intervention in libya. and if you are terminally ill, is it worth it to pay $100,000 for a treatment that probably would give you four extra months to live? plus, stephen ministers -- people trained to care for their fellow congregants by listening and empathizing. major funding for "religion and ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interest in religion, community development, and education. additional funding by mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products.

that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome, i'm kim lawton, sitting in for bob abernethy. thank you for joining us. there were were new questions t week about the american effort in afghanistan. a report from senate democrats urges e administration to re-evaluate assistance programs there. the report says although the u.s. has spent almost $19 billion on aid and nation building, there has only been limited success. and as the military prepares for this summer's troop drawdown, some liberal christians and jews are ramping up their calls for an end to the war altogether. in syria, as the government crackdown intensified this week, humanitarian concerns mounted. hundreds of syrian refugees have fled to turkey. the united nations reports that more than 1,100 people have been killed since anti-government

protests began in march. 10,000 are believed to have been detained. the top u.n. human rights official condemned the government's actions, saying syrian leaders are attempting to "bludgeon the population into submission." there were also rising concerns about the situation in libya. nato stepped up its airstrikes while alliance leaders called for more support in the effort to protect civilians. meanwhile, a u.n. human rights panel said moammar gadhafi's forces have committed crimes against humanity. secretary of state hillary clinton met with regional leaders to discuss future strategies. but the obama administration is coming under increasing pressure. last week the house of representatives approved a measure giving the president until june 17th to provide detailed justification for why the u.s. got involved in libya and why it should continue. an even tougher measure is being taken up in the senate. ining me now is gerard powers,

dictor of caoli peacebuilding studies at the kroc institute for international peace studies at the university of notre dame. jerry, we're hearing a lot about political and financial questions about the situation in libya. what are some of the moral and ethical questions that should also be considered right now? >> thanks for having me, kim. i think there are three broad questions. one is were we morally justified in going in in the first place? the second is are the means that we are using morally justified or are we proving through the means we are using that humanitarian intervention as some allege is really just an oxymoron. and three, i think we have to think about what an ethics of exit means in libya. >> well, let's unpack all of that. we were justified in going in? the president said it was to protect civilians. >> i think humanitarian intervention in extraordinary cases to protect the civilian population is justified. and not only that, there's a

duty in some cases to do that. my concern is that that objective ses toe suumed byther objecves. we are focusing on regime change, not just protecting the libyan civilians, and that will likely prolong the war and actually increases the risk to the very civilians we're purportedly there to protect. >> and how does that change the moral calculus, if the mission or the purpose seems to be changing, does that then affect how we look at it from a moral perspective? >> i think it does absolutely. the only way you can keep humanitarian interventi from becoming a guise for the great powers like the united states to intervene for self-interested reasons under the guise of humanitarian intervention is to have strict criteria, and one of those is to make sure that you limit your objectives to the original humanitarian objectives.

in this case, i'm concerned that not only are our objectives expanding, but the means that we are using are not appropriate to meeting those objectives because we are pursuing a zero casualty war, at least zero casualties on our side, by an exclusively air campaign, and that raises serious questions about can we really achieve our legitimate humanitarian objectives through bombers, cruise missiles, drones, and now attack helicopters. >> well, what, given the obligations, what are the obligations, given what we've done? are you talking about boots on the ground? >> i think we should be pursuing not the almost exclusively military strategy that we are now pursuing, but we need to pursue a political strategy. we need to go beyond the current position of the united states and nato, which is that we will not negotiate until, even on a ceasefire, until the gadhafi regime steps down. and that's not a serious

political, not a serious political strategy. secondly, we need to be much more serious about the consequences of being successful. what comes after gadhafi? are we going to be in another nation building situation like iraq and afghanistan? and are we really prepared to assume the heavy moral responsibilities that come with that? >> all right. well, obviously, a lot of very complicated questions. we will be watching and debating. >> yes. >> thank you very much, jerry powers. >> thanks very much for having me. we have an ethics story today about a new kind of treatment for prostate cancer that costs about $100,000. it could extend the life of a patient for about four months, maybe more. but is it worth the price for a little more time? and who should decide who gets it, and who pays the bill? bob faw reports. >> from his backyard dock, the

setting seems idyllic. with his devoted wife of 47 years, retired air force colonel jim horney should be enjoying the golden years. >> you know, you can look at me and say, god, that guy looks good for 70. but there's a worm in the apple. >> the worm is prostate cancer. jim's doctor first diagnosed it as an aggressive cancer eight years ago. >> i said how long can i expect to live with thiserio prostate cancer? her reply was on average about two and a half years. this was in 2002. so two and a half years -- i am obviously well past my expiration date, if you will. >> jim kept alive during the past eight years by undergoing hormonal therapy and radiation. but now the cancer has spread throughout his body. desperate, this fall he started a revolutionary new treatment --

provenge. did you regard it as a miracle drug? >> absolutely, absolutely did, because i was tired, i was fatigued, i had no future looking at what i was doing now except a slow deterioration. >> provenge is the first so-called "cancer vaccine" -- not a pill mass-produced in a factory, but an individual treatment. the patient's blood is first drawn, exposed in a lab to a protein which mimics prostate cancer, then put back in the patient's body, supercharged, if you will, to stimulate the tient's immune system to fight prostate cancer. >> the idea of having the body's own defenses revved up against this foreign invader is quite novel. it had never been applied to humans in a satisfactory and successful way, and this was, in that sense, a big breakthrough. >> approved last year to treat men with incurable prostate

cancer, provenge extends life for many patients by roughly four months. >> that's the average. i'm well on to beating the averages. and i will work at beating the averages. it is a miracle drug, and so, yeah, i have great expectations for this. huge expectations. will it? we'll see. >> $37,000 for the one treatment. >> but the price tag for this so-called "miracle drug" is on average $93,000. jim horney's bill -- $110,000. >> $110,000. my goodness gracious! how do you, how do you work with something like that? >> jim horney had to take out a $22,000 loan to pay for the first treatment while waiting to see if medicare foots the entire bill. >> they do have me over a barrel, and if push comes to shove i will probably suck this up. >> urologist-oncologist dr. paul

schellhammer plans to use provenge one day to fight his own prostate cancer. he has recommended it to some of his patients knowing how some will struggle with the decision. >> for the person for whom it becomes a jor haship -- i.e., do i mortgage my home, do my kids not go to college -- i think that becomes an elthically based decision as to how important is life? most men in this situation have lived 60, 70 years, and how important is another one, two, three years or two, three, four months? >> yeah, it's not a long time. but, you know, when you're fighting for your life, four months, you know, is just four months more to be with your family, to be with your wife and to enjolife. >> 62-yeaold engineer bill mccloskey's insurance company is paying for his provenge. >> my father died of prostate cancer. this stuff was not available to him.

i feel lucky to be living at a time when new treatments are being developed, when there is hope for the future. >> and while the price is high, says mccloskey, in the long run it may prove to be anything but. >> this opens up a whole brand new type of treatment and hope for cancer patien where you' utilizing the body's own imne system to fight this disease. this is not the end. this is just the beginning. >> dr. schellhammer says provenge has almost no side effects and costs about as much as chemotherapy. still, he is troubled by the skyrocketing cost of many cancer treatments. >> once the fda approves a drug, the pharmaceutical company or the biotech company then has carte blanche in establishing the price. i think there's been a disconnect between what it costs to devop,produce, and bring to market versus what it eventually translates into with

regard to either a windfall or a fair profit. >> dendreon, the developer of provenge, says the price is fair for this revolutionary procedure, which it says took 15 years to perfect and at a cost of over $1 billion. but as the cost of new cancer treatments continues to escalate, ethicists are asking how do you put a price tag on human life? and in a society with limited resources and virtually unlimited medical needs, who decides who will get that expensive treatment and who doesn't? >> if we think it's worth the money, right, do we find a way to squeeze it out of the allocation we've got from health care now? do we find places where we want to squeeze it out from something else? do we want to attach a higher value to extending the last few months of a person's life than we would to any other random

four months over the course of a lifespan? >> ultimately, and unfortunately, says ethicist dr. ruth faden, director of the johns hopkins berman institute of bioethics, the basic question comes down to cost and benefit. >> it would be really nice if we could come up with a structure in which the price of the drug is attached to its value and we had a way of agreeing what that value was. >> there is no such mechanism? >> not yet. >> in fact, say medical practitioners, now there is no such mechanism. who gets proven and who doesn't comes down to a basic proposition. >> the bottom line is economics. >> currently, that is the case. >> as to who gets the drug. >> yes, we have many more patients than the supply could provide, but many of them say, "i just cannot afford it, and that's not in my realm of possibility." so they are screened out by that fact. >> let's be candid. they are screened out by

economics? >> oh, absolutely. >> for some, however, economic considerations are secondary. getting that extra four months of life -- maybe more -- is priceless. >> my husband's worth it. if it means selling our house, so be it. he's more important to me. >> what's his life really worth? is it -- can you put a price tag on life? >> no, absolutely not. no, no. >> it is, then, an ongoing debate over a medical treatment which is new, and a problem which is not. >> even before we get the provenges, we have lots of cancer patients in this country who can't afford their cancer medications as it is. we've got a messy health care system where we haven't figured out what we think constitutes good value for our money. it's that striking a balance. easy to say, almost impossible to achieve so far. >> until that balance is reached for bill mccloskey, who recently completed his third and final

treatment of provenge, and jim horney, still waiting to see how provenge affects his cancer, there will be both hope and anxiety. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," this is bob faw in poqson, virgnia. >> since that piece first aired in february, jim horney tells us he is hugely disappointed with the drug. he says he had only a brief improvement. he's now back undergoing radiation treatment. in other news, in india, an extremely popular yoga guru launched a hunger strike against what he calls his nation's "pervasive culture of corruption." baba ramdev is a television celebrity with a large following around the world, including here in the u.s. he's calling on the indian government to crack down against corruption. indian leaders say ramdev's campaign is fomenting unrest. dozens were injured when police broke up a rally with his supporters. in san francisco, a ballot

initiative that would ban the circumcision of minors is generating controversy. the measure will be voted on in november. supporters call circumcision mutilation and argue that it's an unnecessary medical procedure. however, several jewish and muslim groups say banning circumcision would infringe upon their religious freedom by outlawing practice of their faith. some christian groups also oppose the ban. texas governor rick perry has invited his fellow governors to a day of prayer and fasting for the nation. perry says america needs divine guidance during a time of financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. the august event in houston is described as non-denominational christian. many groups that advocate the separation of church and state have urged governors to boycott the gathering, saying elected officials should not participate in an explicitly christian ent. in thousands of christian

congregations, there are often people who need more spiritual comforting than any one pastor can provide. that's where trained lay caregivers called stephen ministers come in. st. stephen was an early church deacon and the first christian martyr. as deborah potter reports, stephen ministers don't counsel. but they do offer prayer and listening. >> i just don't know what to do. >> sometimes you just need someone to listen. >> i just don't know how to resolve this in my head. i'm st really upset. i can't forgive myself. >> sometimes you need something more -- a hand to hold and maybe a prayer. >> dear lord, thank you for watching over all of us today. in your name, we pray. >> amen. thank you so much. i feel so much better. >> at good shepherd lutheran church in raleigh, north carolina, parishioners are training to become caregivers. >> the key thing that i saw is you leaned into her. you engaged her and told her,

"i'm listening to you." >> they're learning to be stephen ministers, named for st. stephen, the first christian martyr who cared for the poor. parishioners are recruited and interviewed by the pastor, then trained to offer one-to-one care to people in and around their congregation. they commit to be available as needed for two years, but many serve longer. pam montgomery has been involved for two decades, balancing stephen ministry with responsibilities at home. >> hi, mom. >> please drive carefully. >> i will, i promise. >> but sometimes the caregiver is the one who needs care. >> this is my dad and my mom. >> seven years ago, pam's father died of cancer. just two weeks later she lost her grandmother. as she grappled with her grief, a friend surprised her with a suggestion -- what if pam herself asked for a stephen minister? >> when you're so close to it, i didn't even think about me having one and yet i really

needed one. and that stephen minister was the best gift i could have given myself then. she came week after week after week when other people, even my wonderful neighbors, even my wonderful friends, stopped asking, "you doing okay?" she came and she prayed for me, just for me, and that's really powerful. >> when a person allows you into their life and shares their feelings and their hurts with you, they are giving you a fantastic gift, and i think when you listen to them and when you accept their feelings and when you share love, christ's love to them, you are giving them a similarly powerful gift. >> kenneth haugk started stephen ministries in 1975, when as pastor of a church in st. louis, he found he just couldn't do it all. so drawing on his background as a clinical psychologist, he

enlisted and trained a handful of lay people to offer confidential care to their fellow parishioners. and then it spread, becoming a nonprofit juggernaut. good shepherd is one of 10,000 congregations around the worlwhere parishioners sere as sthen nists. more than 150 christian denominations have adopted the program. >> christianity is not a spectator sport. it was never intended to be a spectator sport. god gave to the church apostles, evangelists, and pastors and teachers whose job is to equip the saints for ministry. >> how did it feel to have your confession treated in that way? >> stephen ministers go through 50 hours of instruction and practice, earning to help care receivers express their feelings, to listen without judging, and how to bring faith and the bible into the conversation. >> can we pray?

dear god, please give randy the absolute confidence of his forgiveness. >> they also study specific situations, like dealing with grief and divorce. but stephen ministers are not counselors, so they also learn when to call in professional help from a pastor or therapist. their work is supervised at the parish level, and if a care-giving relationship doesn't work out, which does happen sometimes, either party can be reassigned. good shepherd's senior pastor, david sloop, introduced the program here in 1987. >> it took a while for people to say, instead of "i need to speak to the pastor," to also say, "or can i have a stephen minister?" and that's a cultural shift, but it did occur, and we're grateful it did. that old lutheran concept of the priesthood of all believers, stephen ministry helps you live that out. >> consider your stewaship of a precious resource -- god's gifted people.

>> to enroll in the program, parishes pay a one-time fee of about $1,700, giving them access to materials and leadership sessions like this one in orlando, florida, where experienced stephen ministers and pastors learn how to train more cavegivers back home. >> i was a care receiver, and i tell everybody, even before i became a stephen minister, about my experience. >> jaclyn hicks and her husband were struggling with infertility when her pastor at church of the savior united mhodi in cincinnati suggesd a stephen mister >> it changed my life. it changed my life just having somebody be there for you, supporting you. >> after becoming pregnant and having a daughter, hicks became a stephen minister herself. >> it's huge to be on the flip side, to be able to just care for someone during their time of need. it's been a tremendous blessing, and i get, as a stephen minister, just as much out of it as i feel my care receivers do. >> care-giving relationships are always same-gender, and the

program tends to attract more women than men. rene anctil of good shepherd wasn't sure at first that he was cut out to be a stephen minister. >> i tended to rely on myself a lot, and throughout this process i've kind of learned that i'm truly the caregiver. i'm not the cure giver, and that's god's part. >> while stephen ministry relationships are strictly confidential, anctil's care receiver, ed, said we could sit in on one of their weekly sessions. they started meeting more than a year ago, after ed's wife died. >> you mentioned that your daughter mentioned to you that she thought you were depressed. >> yeah. oh, yeah. >> how did that make you feel? >> i don't think i'm depressed, but you get moody once in a while. your body wears out when you get old. you always want to do something that you can't do. that's the hardest part. >> i think i recognize god in my

life a lot more than i had in the past, and a lot of it is because of stephen ministry. i see god working not only with my care reive but with , which i never saw before. >> in the 35 years since the program started, 500,000 people have been trained as stephen ministers, each one touching at least one other person and being touched in return. >> i'm not going to go away. i'm going to be there as long as he needs me. i don't know where the end's going to be, but we're going to do it together. for "religion and ethics newsweekly," i'm deborah potter in raleigh, north carolina. finally on our calendar this week, sunday is pentecost, when christians celebrate god's gift of the holy spirit to the church. according to the new testament, the holy spirit came to jesus' followers in the form of tongues of fire. pentecost is also known as the birthday of the church. that's our program for now. i'm kim lawton. you can follow us on facebook,

where i have a fan page, too. we're also on twitter and youtube. and you can watch us anytime, anywhere on smartphones and iphones. we have much more on our website, including more about stephen mists and morof my converti witgerard pows. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, scenes from pope benedict xvi's visit to croatia last weekend. [ bells ringing ]

[ speaking in foreign language ] major funding for "religion and ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interest in religion, community development, and education. additional funding by mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting.