potentiality vs. speciesism

In class today, the subject of potentiality was brought up. My understanding of the subject as explained by various participating members of the class is as follows: An object or being can be judged in numerous ways, one of which being its potential. Stated another way an ethical choice can be made towards or rather between two objects based on either's potential. An example of this theory being the question which is more important the acorn or the leaf of the oak tree. Theoretically the most 'choice' answer would be the acorn seeing as it has the potential to become a brand new oak tree while the leaf just sadly seeps into the soil and is slowly forgotten. However, another topic discussed was that of speciesism. This being the perhaps immoral favoring of ones own species over another. My curiosity is whether or not potentiality can outweigh speciesism, or the affects of it. To put it into exact circumstances: If for some hypothetical situation a human being had to make a decision as to whether or not a baby child died or a monkey used in science died. Hopefully, most people would choose, no matter how unfortunate to kill the monkey used in science, perhaps simply because it is a baby and they are our own species or perhaps the baby is viewed as having more potential then the monkey when the baby grows up. I want to examine the latter example more closely. If the baby, say a one year old is seen as having eventual potential, more so than the monkey of science then a human would be inclined, more to the point, obligated to save the baby's life. However, what if the baby had a disease that would prevent he or she from reaching this potential. Say, for example the child is born with Tay-Sachs or encephalitis and the monkey is completely healthy and able to make solid contributions to the scientific community. Would the lack of potential in the human child make the human deciding which life to save, choose the monkey? Or more generally, does potential or in this case a lack of outweigh the intrinsic speciesism, perhaps biologically imprinted in human beings?