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Quaid sues over medical error
05/12/2007 14:32 - (SA)
Los Angeles - Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberley are suing pharmaceutical company Baxter Healthcare after one of its products almost killed their newborn twins.
The lawsuit alleges that the couple's 2-week-old twins were given 10 000 units of the blood-thinning drug Heparin last month, instead of a 10-unit dose, because the drug's bottles looked almost identical.
The babies have since recovered after being treated in the intensive care unit and are back at home.
But the Quaid's are hoping the lawsuit helps prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.
"The last thing the Quaids want to do is to file a lawsuit, but the objective is to prevent this happening to someone else," their lawyer Susan Loggans said.
The lawsuit alleges that the small and large doses of Heparin had similar blue background labels, and that Baxter Healthcare failed to recall or repackage the bottles "when it had actual knowledge that prior infant deaths had occurred as a result of medication errors."
"The Quaids are very religious, and they believe their children's recovery is a real miracle," Loggans said. - dpa
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South Africa
