I love The Onion. I’m proud to say I went to the university where this “fake news” was born in Madison, Wisconsin. When it comes to comedy, they truly have a gift (you can hear what the fantastic radio show This American Life has to say about The Onion’s process of picking headlines each week here).

But I was particularly impressed by The Onion today when I read this article: Underfunded Scientists Force Lipstick-Covered Rat With Cancer To Run Through Maze. Perhaps, like with most topics, they were merely setting out to say something funny about animal testing. But they’ve also managed to support the argument against animal testing by describing (in exaggerated form) how ridiculous, unreliable, and cruel animal testing is. And because The Onion is so popular, this article is going to reach thousands, and perhaps even convince some of them that animal testing is, in fact, horrendus. Or, perhaps they’ll simply get a kick out of just how unlucky poor Mendel the rat is.