Viruses are not alive either, actually. Viruses can only thrive and replicate once they are in a host system. On their own they can do nothing.
• Use vaccination to train the host's immune system deal with it, should it ever encounter the full version.
• Use special drugs to slow down their replication to let the host's immune system deal with the rest.
Prions have no special, prion-only replication strategy we can target, and I'm not sure whether the immune system can be trained to attack only prions and not their regular protein equivalents.
A prion tends to be vastly different than the original protein. I thought the bigger problem was that prions are the metaphorical tanks of the protein world. Just look at what it takes to denature a prion compared to other proteins.
The most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not life: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense
While viruses are generally not considered to be alive, they are considered to be instances of life, aren't they?
Everyone has their own definition though. I remember reading a novel where life was defined simply as heredity, mutation, and adaptation. The second definition makes more sense to me, and implicitly includes viruses.