The idea of having to use a blowtorch or heating to cherry red in order to "kosherise" does seem bizzare but those nasty little PRIONS take some killing.

Sterilizing surgical instruments

From New Scientist, 13 February 1999 Ian Mason and Michael Day

The heat is on. The temperatures routinely used to sterilise surgical instruments in British hospitals might actually help to spread the deadly brain disease CJD, say researchers in Scotland. However, the finding could lead to more effective ways of disinfecting surgical instruments contaminated by prions, the rogue proteins thought to cause the disease.

Concerns that surgeons' instruments might pass on new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of BSE, intensified last month with news that the infection is present throughout the lymph tissue of victims, not just in the central nervous system (This Week, 23 January, p 5). [Only tonsil has actually been studied thoroughly in lymphoreticular system -- webmaster]

Because there is no sure way of sterilising instruments contaminated with prions, the discovery prompted calls for surgeons to use disposable instruments for operations involving lymph tissue. But so far the British government has not committed itself because of the high costs.

Now there is evidence that attempts to disinfect instruments by "pressure cooking" them at high temperatures in an autoclave might do more harm than good. David Taylor of the Institute for Animal Health in Edinburgh found that increasing the temperature of the autoclave actually made it harder to destroy CJD prions. In one experiment, infected tissue samples were heated at 134 ƒC for 9, 18 and 30 minutes. The treated samples were not infectious. However, when the experiment was repeated at 138 ƒC, the tissue was still infectious. In Britain, the standard temperature range for autoclaving instruments is 134 to 138 ƒC.

Taylor believes the slightly higher temperature "fixed" the prion, allowing chemical links to form that made the molecules more stable. He is preparing his results for publication. {not published as of 6 Mar 99 but see other similar studies by DM Taylor -- webmaster

I used to think Jehovahs Witnesses where over the top regarding blood transfusions...and then along came AIDS etc.
Perhaps these guys know something after all!
I'm off for a bacon sanger!
(well cooked)