[supercat]

Have you ever opened up a peanut? When you break the outer shell, then open up the meat and look, at one end of the edible portion is a tiny peanut plant. Try it, it is revealing, cat!

I am well aware that plant seeds are relatively advanced products of sexual reproduction. They are not, however, as a matter of course treated as individual organisms.

Are you aware of any farmer who would look at a field of corn and consider the number of corn plants out there to be the number of stalks plus the number of seeds? While such a tally might in some sense be biologically accurate, any bookkeeper who recorded things that way would be considered insane.

There are a number of events that have to come together to produce a human being. Although the determination of the genetic makeup is an important landmark, it is but one of the necessary steps. If I mark five numbers on a Little Lotto playslip, I have determined the unique combination of numbers that will be on any ticket purchased with that playslip. I do not, however, have a lottery ticket. Even though I will have all the 'information' needed for a lottery ticket, I won't actually have a ticket until I combine that playslip with (1) $1, and (2) an Illinois Lottery participating retailer. Until those latter ingredients are added, all I have is a playslip.

[MHGinTN]

"Are you aware of any farmer who would look at a field of corn and consider the number of corn plants out there to be the number of stalks plus the number of seeds? While such a tally might in some sense be biologically accurate, any bookkeeper who recorded things that way would be considered insane." Your analogy is better applied to the moment following birth, rather than the earliest age along the continuum that is an individual organism.

[hocndoc]

"Are you aware of any farmer who would look at a field of corn and consider the number of corn plants out there to be the number of stalks plus the number of seeds?"

Bad analogy.

What is the purpose of the count? If it is to find the true number of individual plants, the number of viable seeds would need to be included. If corn plants were valued as human beings are nominally valued, then each seed would be equally valuable and protected from intentional killing along with the their parent plants. If you doubt that, switch to Marvin's example of condor eggs.