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This chapter describes measures used to improve the performance of biological control agents for nematode management. Suppressive soils have been associated with the continuous cultivation of nematode-susceptible crops, which support increases in the natural enemy community. Soils that become suppressive to nematode pests and the agronomic practices that may destroy such natural control and lead to increased nematode infestations are discussed. Biological control alone is often inadequate to maintain nematode populations below their economic threshold and must be integrated with other management methods. Methods that decrease nematode infestations in soil or increase the activity of microbial agents are reviewed and some examples given where their combination with agents applied to soil have enhanced the efficacy of biological control. There may be problems for growers with the delivery of such integrated control strategies unless they receive adequate support from extension services, which may be absent in many countries. Hence, the exploitation of natural enemies as a source of genes and compounds with anti-nematode properties, which could be used in chemical and genetic interventions may provide alternative approaches for nematode management.

This paper takes a step beyond the enhancement debate, into the domain of genetic design. It explores what morality may have to say about the creation of “designer babies,” that is, about new human beings whose genetic code is either composed from scratch or produced through modification of a fertilized human egg cell or of a human clone. I pose this bewildering question in the context of an imagined future world in which genetic design is much more advanced in a way that makes it safe, predictable, and reasonably affordable. Such a future world may be less than a century away. I also impose three artificial limits on the discussion: I consider genetic design or redesign only in regard to a one-cell organism that, once designed, will grow and develop “naturally” without any further genetic interventions. I confine the discussion to the design of what clearly are human beings, that is, beings whose genetic endowments all lie within the parameters of the existing human gene pool. And I assume a social world much like ours, in which the creation of new human beings is initiated by human adults who generally love and care for the child and who bear a legal responsibility to safeguard the child’s basic interests until it reaches maturity. In such a world, I conclude, the law may be quite permissive with regard to the genetic design choices of parents.

A defining feature of gene therapy, in contrast to conventional medical treatment, is that it is explicitly designed to bring about changes at the genetic level, by, for example, introducing a functioning gene into a human being who lacks one. Questions arise as to whether the alteration of an individual’s genetic make-up could bring about a change in who that person is, i.e. an identity change, and if so whether this is something about which there are grounds for concern from a moral point of view. In order to answer these questions it is necessary to examine what the connection is, if any, between genes and the person, and how that might be affected by gene therapy.

The essays in this volume, while exploring bioethical issues concerning death and dying, the use of scarce resources, and genetic interventions, also implicitly, and at times explicitly, compare Japanese and Western approaches to bioethics. As this volume shows, there are similarities. There are also marked differences. The similarities reflect a common attempt outside of any particular culture to find morally justified bases for collaboration when individuals do not share taken-for-granted understandings of the proper use of health care and the correct ways to collaborate. Both Japanese and Western scholars recognize the challenge of articulating a moral framework when they do not find themselves part of a particular moral community sharing a particular content-full morality. Similarities derive as well from content-full Western moral understandings that have been exported to Japan and which for better and worse have changed Japan. They also derive from Japan’s exposure to the post-traditional character of our age. Many of the dissimilarities between Japan and the West stem from the circumstance that Japan still remains in great measure a traditional society with strong commitments to family and community. Japanese still share many common understandings of values. The dissimilarities stem in addition from the impact of the West’s long struggles with its own moral diversity.