[mod_python] avoiding apache restarts to reimport modules and refresh global cache

I have been using my python based web application framework, slither, 
which was recently upgraded to be a mod_python handler for more than 6 
months now for various applications at my company.  One dillema I see 
with the persistent environment with mod_python is that everytime I 
update code in production, i have to restart apache so that my library 
modules can be reloaded as well as any caching I am using.

 I am using apache.import_module() to import any page modules in my 
applications and those get reimported at every change since they have 
the autoreload turned on.  I also know that Vampire has a pretty good 
module importing system then that provided by apache.import_module().  I 
was wondering if it would be a good idea overwrite the 
__builtin__.import() method with that of Vampire's import_module or 
apache.import_module() so that the checks of "mtime" are done and the 
reloads happen automatically.

Is there another better way of reloading all my library modules and 
refreshing the cache?

Hozi