Some of you may have this seen this story on Yahoo! News about a beer batch in Iran that went bad and has, so far, killed 22 people. The most important graphs:

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - A toxic batch of homebrew alcohol has killed 22 people in southern Iran and put scores more in hospital, local officials said Tuesday.

"Alcohol is officially banned in the Islamic state. But those determined to break the enforced sobriety can purchase smuggled imports on the black market or buy locally made spirits.

"Some of them died after days of suffering in hospital," Hossein Ali Amiri, a judiciary official in the southern Fars province, told state television.

"Amiri said 93 people had been hospitalized after drinking the brew, which doctors suspect may have contained methanol, which is toxic."

What most amazes me is the number of people who partook in the batch. Over 90 people had some of the moonshine. That's quite a client list.

This whole event underlines the fallacy of prohibition. While I greatly sympathize with Islam's prohibition on alcohol as part of an unhealthy and unclean lifestyle, making it illegal clearly has its own unhealthy side effects. I'd be interested in seeing a report of how many died during prohibition in the United States because of A) bad moonshine or, B) violence stemming from the creation and distribution of illegal alcohol. After all, organized crime got its start in this country running beer rackets in big cities like Chicago and New York. Is there an organized beer-crime racket going on in Iran today? Is there a Muhammad al-Capone out there? These are important questions. I'm calling the State Department right now.

In the meanwhile, I would like to note that our beer has, so far, killed not a single person, and only made evenings more enjoyable for all. The third batch, by the way, is going well. We're moving to the secondary carboy in a day or two.