As someone who's a bit obsessive about food safety and also a seasoned(!) meat-eater, here's my take:
Your chances of getting poisoning from a rare steak are so small they're not even worth worrying about. If the outside is seared (on all sides) you can have it still cold and mooing in the middle and you'll be fine, since the outside is the only place bacteria are likely to be - cross-contamination from handling in the slaughterhouse, butchers etc. That's why you shouldn't really eat ground beef/hamburgers rare or even medium - all that nonsense on the outside of a cut gets mixed the whole way through. But again, your chance of getting properly sick from it isn't especially high with beef, so people take the risk.
Some people do have a sensitive stomach to meat the rarer it is - probably partly psychosomatic, partly something to do with the composition making it harder to digest or whatever. My sister and stepson are people like this. Nothing to worry about, mind you, maybe just a difficult shit or two.
And yeah, as said, you can handle pork about the same way you would beef now! I personally don't like it rare because the texture is a bit mushy like wet paper, but medium and above you're having a good time.
