mod_perl is too dangerous for web hosts to offer because it allows you to shutdown, restart and reconfigure Apache from within a Perl script.

This almost identical phrase seems to crop all over the place, with no attribution or supporting evidence as if it is absolutely the case with no possibility of mitigation. It would sound less like some third party cargo-FUD if some example or documentation were provided to be honest. Personally I'm pretty certain that whilst it might be possible to "shutdown, restart and reconfigure Apache from within a Perl script", it is equally not possible to do these things within any Perl script whether the administrator wants this to happen or not.

/J\