Man, when the guys at Microsoft are saying that it’s better to nuke a system than to try and clean off the malware you know it’s getting bad. I think that in the future Microsoft will be releasing virtual environments for your browser to work in. Much like running Virtual PC on a Macintosh or VMware, these will be fully self contained virtual machines that can be wiped and reloaded on the fly. The only thing I can see that would be a problem is that keeping personal configurations like bookmarks or cookies around after a nuke might pose a security problem.
For now, having a healthy collection of tools and the know how to use them is your best defence. I personally use SpyBot Search & destroy, RootkitRevealer, Windows Defender, HiJack This. If these don’t cure ya, you might want to try an Apple.