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Quaid Speaks Out on Medical Mistakes
CBS interview highlights nationwide epidemic of preventable deaths
By Katherine Thompson
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Posted Mar 15, 08 1:11 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Dennis Quaid has gone on record about the frightening ordeal of his newborn twins receiving massive overdoses of blood thinners, and now he's going on 60 Minutes to ratchet up his information campaign. Quaid's interview, which will be broadcast tomorrow evening, uses his own harrowing story to highlight medical errors that kill 100,000 people a year in the US. "Our kids are bleeding from every place that they've punctured," he recalled. "It was blood everywhere."
Quaid's twins were mistakenly given adult Heparin instead of the children's version, Hep-lock; packaging on the two looks alike, though the adult version is 1000 times stronger. The twins nearly bled to death—three similarly dosed children in Indiana did die—and Quaid is suing the drug's maker, Baxter International, for not recalling its misleading packaging.