Indeed — Weinstein’s claim (that I don’t have the expertise to validate) is that an enormous amount of biomedical research is performed on a subset of mice from a single breeding facility in Maine. These mice have abnormally long telomeres as compared to wild mice. This means they can take remarkable amounts of cellular damage before apoptosis (cell death) is triggered. The downside is that, by forestalling even desirable apoptosis, these mouse cells frequently end up cancerous.

If true, Weinstein says, this means that any compounds tested on these mice will necessarily look less damaging than they should, at least in the short run, because these mice have extensive regenerative capabilities. This might explain how certain drugs that cause heart damage (e.g. Vioxx) got approved — they looked safe in these super-mice, and human safety testing was too brief to catch the damage being done.