Many "SELECT * FROM tbl_name" queries are run every time a contact is updated

Every time a contact record is updated several "SELECT * FROM tbl_name;" queries are run. For a large installation these queries really bog things down. If there are many happening simultaneously they will even crash mysql. This really becomes a problem for things that do a lot of updates at a time (contributions from the self-serve pages, synchronize users<->contacts, account creation, etc).