  According to the Unequal Interests Model, the difference in moral status between paradigmatic persons and merely sentient animals consists in the fact that paradigmatic person have interests of significantly greater weight than the interests of merely sentient animals. These weightier interests mean that killing a paradigmatic person and thereby frustrating those interests will generally be morally worse in and of itself than killing a merely sentient animal. Moreover, harms that appear comparable at first glance, say, causing a certain kind of injury, are generally morally worse in and of themselves, when inflicted upon a paradigmatic person than on a merely sentient animal. This is because the same kind of injury is likely to impair the interests of the paradigmatic person more severely than it would the interests of a merely sentient animal.