A compassionate autonomy alternative to speciesism

Many people in the animal welfare community have argued that the use of nonhuman animals in medical research is necessarily based on speciesism, an unjustified prejudice based on species membership. As such it is morally akin to racism and sexism. This is misguided. The combined capacities for autonomy and sentience with the obligations derived from relations support a morally justifiable rationale for using some nonhuman animals in order to limit the risk of harm to humans. There may be a few cases where it is morally better to use a never sentient human than a sentient animal, but these cases are few and would not fulfill the current need for research subjects. The use of nonautonomous animals instead of humans in risky research can be based on solid moral ground. It is not necessarily speciesism.