Point, counter point: What defines a single living organism?

Point, counter point: What defines a single living organism?
The burner has been turned to high on this weeks ever captivating, always stimulating never ending, debating series that pits normally amiable Buffalo Bulletin reporters against each other in a no-holds-barred intellectual death match.
Remember to weigh in with your own perspective and your vote for the argument of triumph.

It’s an easy answer: genetics.
If an organism consists of all the same genetic make-up, then, by nature, it is one single living organism.
The difference in genes is what differentiates one living organism from another.
Genetic make-up develops unique characteristics e.g. a duck bill is caused by a certain genetic make-up specific to ducks where as the luscious, supple lips of Farrah Fawcett are caused by another set of genes specific to stunning women with great lips.
This is why I think of the beautiful actor as one living organism and the dirty city-pond animal as another — their personalized characteristics set them apart and those characteristics are caused by genetics.
My opponent will argue that it is space that makes a single living organism.
“If that organism is all connected then it can be considered as ‘one’,” he will say.
Foolishly leveling that an aspen grove in Utah possessing a single root structure is ‘one’ giant living organism despite the fact that some of the trees possess different genetic make-up.
What folly.
If this case were to hold any water, you could consider a blood-sucking leech that had attached itself to your underarm after an afternoon skinning dipping as the same organism as yourself.
But you wouldn’t because you have a mind and you think things through rationally.
The fact is that genetics are responsible for developing the body, and the space it takes up, that’s why some of us are short, some tall, some ugly and some, like myself, mirror images of famous 1940 movie stars.
Those features are what distinguish organisms and those features are the results of genes.
The problem arises when we discuss clones.
Is the clone of an organism the same organism?
Yes.
That’s the value of having a clone.
Why would you want a copy of your late Grandpa Earl if it couldn’t be considered the same organism?
You could go pick up the closest looking man and that would qualify as having your grandpa back.
The value of cloning comes from having the same organism as what existed before. A clone is the same organism from whence it came.
Genetics distinguish a single living entity from another and they define what we consider ‘one living organism’.
Q.E.D.

Organism? One body, one mind one soul

Point, counter point: What defines a single living organism? The burner has been turned to high on this weeks ever captivating, always stimulating never ending, debating series that pits normally amiable Buffalo Bulletin reports against each other in a no-holds-bar intellectual death match. Remember to weigh in with your perspective and your vote for the argument of
triumph.

I'm afraid Mr. Smith is fighting an uphill battle from the get go with this week's Point/Counterpoint. An organism, by anyone's standards, is by definition a SINGLE entity, one that functions as a SINGLE system that utilizes energy and is capable of metabolic functions.

Take our friend Mr. Smith. By powers unbeknownst to me, Mr. Smith is able to survive off of a simple diet of cigarettes, Ramen noodles and Maker's Mark. He separates the three into meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner respectively) and by some metabolic miracle, his self-contained and self-sufficient body is able to produce the energy he needs to slump and sidle his way from place to place.

Upon closer review, we find that Mr. Grant's case is not so surprising. In the kingdom of what we call "living organisms," there exist many species that use chemical substances that, though extremely poisonous to other species, suit the organic needs of that creature. It is the symbiotic nature of existence. Humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while plants do just the opposite. By reasonable deduction, we can infer that Mr. Smith is, in fact, not at all human. He is instead a strange unidentified organism probably born in a Waffle House somewhere.

Nonetheless, the noodles, smoke and alcohol that enter Mr. Smith's body (or the organism we will call "Spaceship Grant) are converted, through the work of his team of bodily functions, into energy that he can uses to continue to imbibe, inhale and ingest. The waste, via yet another system found aboard "Spaceship Grant," is expelled in any number of ways, each of which is found to be equally offensive to his nearby coworkers.

Doing our best to keep ourselves out of the technical jargon that inevitably traps most scientists struggling to create a de facto, universal classification, we will employ simple reasoning to conclude that "Spaceship Grant," as a single entity, can be suitably classified as an organism. To be led astray by arguments founded in DNA theory that try to define an organism as anything but a SINGLE entity capable of the above-mentioned processes is, in the end, a pointless exercise in academic blathering.