Eric -
Sam and Juliet..I appreciate the ported concern and all. IMO any short barrel/large caliber-magnum gun...you run the same risks with or without porting.
If we were talking about just flash and blast, you
might have point, but we're talking about of lot of other stuff light hot gas, particles, and we are talking about it being directed out 90 degrees from the direction of fire. Riddle made a good point with the very small cylinder gap, now multiply two or three ports, and what do you have--a tenfold or more increase? If you really want to go this route, additional weight/big grips rather than ports is the way to go--but then you have to give up "carryability" for "shootability."
Again, ported barrels (and even .357 Magnums with hot loads like the 125-grain JHPs) are great for the range and impressing people who don't know better, but they are not for serious life and death carry. I could see where the actual use of these weapons/loads under the wrong (but nontheless, realistic) conditions could conceivably leave the user in worse shape than the target. You give up far more than you can ever hope to gain. Even if you did manage to achieve sufficent velocity for minimal expansion, it would still nowhere approach the effectiveness of the rounds in the full-size service weapons for which they were designed. Like you said Eric, these weapons involve trade-offs--why trade-off shootability, follow-up shots/accuracy for maybe (and a very big maybe) a very slight increase in terminal effectiveness if any--it's just not worth it. These weapons, by design, are calibre holes in, calibre holes out weapons regardless (if you want anything that approaches sufficient penetration).
Probably the best way to improve the terminal effectiveness of this class of weapons would be the "big and slow" approach. The .45 Colt or .45 ACP would be ideal if one were to stick to heavy blunt-nosed bullets at say between 750-850 fps (and loose the ported barrels). Taurus already makes one excellent weapon of this class with the 445 in .44 Special. Going to the .44 Special will give you about a 44% increase in crush cavity over the .38/.357.