Four months ago a hospital worker accidentally overdosed Dennis Quaid's newborn twins with 1,000 times the recommended dose of blood thinner.

That's an almost unfathomably horrible thing for anyone to have to go through, and yet Dennis Quaid has happily given a televised interview where he recounts the whole awful story from beginning to end. Why would Dennis Quaid subject himself to this? Because he's still furious about the cock-up and claims that medical mistakes are responsible for 100,000 deaths a year in America alone, that's why. 

And also we suspect it's because if Dennis Quaid didn't talk about his children almost dying, he'd have had to talk about Vantage Point instead. He must have gone for the least emotionally-gruelling choice.

Dennis Quaid is a man who knows about trauma. He's starred in a 3D Jaws movie, worked with Lindsay Lohan and spent the best part of decade married to Meg Ryan. If that's not an iron-clad training for battle-worn stoicism in the face of trouble we're really not sure what is.

And it's exactly what Dennis Quaid needed in November when his newborn twins almost died of a massive overdose of the blood-thinning drug Heparin. Without properly reading the dosage on the bottle, a nurse at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center injected Quaid's two-week-old twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace with 10,000 units of an anti-coagulant instead of just 10.

And now Dennis Quaid has been interviewed by 60 Minutes about his experiences and the 100,000 Americans killed by medical mistakes each year, as Reuters reports:

"It's bigger than AIDS. It's bigger than breast cancer. It's bigger than automobile accidents and yet, no one seems to really be aware of the problem." In the Quaids' case, staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center near Beverly Hills gave their two-week-old twins, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, 1,000 times the recommended dose of the blood thinner heparin last November. "It basically turned their blood to the consistency of water, where it had a complete inability to clot. They were basically bleeding out at that point," Quaid said.

Although the babies have now recovered, Dennis Quaid wants to stop this from happening again, which is why he's suing Heparin manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp for everything its got, or at least a tiny fraction of it. However, Baxter has queried the fact that Dennis Quaid isn't suing the hospital for employing people who can't tell the difference between 10 and 10,000, especially since the hospital didn't even notify the Quaids of the mistake until word got out to the media.

But still, that's not important because – unless those specific hospital workers are impressively prolific - they're probably not responsible for all 100,000 annual deaths. And misreading medication labels is an exceptionally easy thing to do – this one time we meant to buy a bottle of Calpol SixPlus to chug in pursuit of a legally-available buzz like our dead hero Pimp C, but we accidentally picked up a bottle of Sugar Free Calpol Infant instead.

That was our night shagged, we don't mind telling you.

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Dennis Quaid recounts twins' near-death experience – Reuters 

Dennis Quaid's newborn baby twins are lucky to be alive – it wasn't so long ago that they were being injected with doses of blood-thinner 1,000 times larger than normal.

But although his new son and daughter survived the giant Heparin overdose – and are thought to be recovering well – Dennis Quaid is still thirsty for revenge. That's why Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly Buffington are suing Baxter Healthcare Corp, which manufactures Heparin, for £50,000 in a product liability lawsuit. It shows just how angry Dennis Quaid must be to pursue Baxter through legal paths, because in the past he's resolved any outstanding medical difficulties by shrinking himself down to a sub-atomic level and injecting himself up Martin Short's arse.

There are basically two things that parents never want to hear. One is "This is my new boyfriend. His name is Joshua but everyone calls him Devil Puke," and the other is "Sorry, we appear to have accidentally given your newborn baby twins 1,000 times more of this anti-coagulant drug than we were supposed to. Whoops."

And although Dennis Quaid still has the first one to look forward to, he knows the stomach-dropping fear of the second only too well. Last month the lives of Dennis Quaid's baby twins were put in jeopardy when hospital workers at the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre inadvertently injected them with 10,000 units of blood-thinning drug Heparin instead of the usual 10.

Fortunately Dennis Quaid's twins have recovered well from the almighty, near-fatal cock-up, but that doesn't mean that Dennis Quaid is going to forgive and forget. No, Dennis Quaid wants revenge, just like in that film of his, Jaws 3-D. But, you know, he wants it by suing a pharmaceutical company instead of exploding a big shark's mum with a hand grenade. For once.

So, long story short, Dennis Quaid has taken out a lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare Corp because he claims that different volumes of Heparin should be labelled more visibly, and the fact that they aren't is grounds for a product liability suit on the basis that he wants no other children to go through the same thing.

However, Baxter is claiming that the babies were only overdosed in the first place because hospital workers can't read numbers very well. Baxter spokeswoman Deborah Spak says:

"This is not a product issue. The issue here is about improper use of a product. While we strive to clearly differentiate our products and dosages, no amount of differentiation will replace the value of clinicians carefully reviewing and reading a drug name and dose before dispensing and administering it."

While it's not our place to speculate on legal matters that we clearly know nothing about – for once – the main thing is that Dennis Quaid's twins are OK. And the other main thing is that all of their future medical ailments will be cured by injecting a miniature Dennis Quaid into their arses and letting him fly around their guts getting slightly drunk, singing Sam Cooke songs and occasionally battling miniature evil nonspecific Europeans in a fight to the death above some stomach acid.

Read more:

Dennis Quaid And Wife Sue Drug Maker – Associated Press