This sounds to me more like symantics than substance. The reason mice are used in medical experiments is that we share 99 percent of the bichemistry of mice. What I find remarkable is that tiny changes in the blueprint make such huge differences in form and function. This is one of those profound differences between things that are "designed" and things arising through evolution. Living things have an enormous economy in their blueprints.
I read this statement and come up with the reverse sense than you do, probably because you used the word "blueprint." A blueprint is a model of economy; and blueprints are always designs. Living things arising in nature through evolution may do so according to a blueprint in precisely this sense. I don't think this possibility has been (perhaps cannot be) ruled out.
Indeed there is a tremendous economy in living things. For example, when the genome project was done, scientists were surprised that there were only some 30,000 odd thousand genes in humans because they had already identified some 100,000 different proteins used in human organisms. The reason is that genes can be made to make more than one protein by using very sophisticated code reuse. Some genes can make more than 50-60 proteins! Code reuse is definitely a sign of intelligence. It takes hard thinking to figure out how to take code from here and there to make it do something else you need done. This cannot be done by dumb luck.