Actor Dennis Quaid testified again, this time before Congress on Wednesday, about the nightmare he had been through last year when his twins were accidentally administered 1,000 times the normal dose of a blood thinner. His testimony is meant to urge the U.S. Congress to preserve patients’ rights to sue drugmakers for injuries.

The panel’s hearing focused on the issue of “pre-emption,” under which FDA approval guarantees immunity for drug companies against state lawsuits, because federal law supersedes stat law.

The Supreme Court in a February case immunized makers of some medical devices like pacemakers from such lawsuits, and a pending case from Vermont making the same argument involving problems with a Wyeth prescription drug will be argued before the high court next term, on October.

“Like many Americans, I believed that a big Problem in our country was frivolous lawsuits. But now I know that the courts are often the only path to justice. I believe if preemption of lawsuits is allowed to prevail, it will basically make all of us, the public, uninformed and uncompensated lab rats,” Quaid said at a House of Representatives committee hearing, as quoted by Reuters.

Quaid urged to pass legislation to protect patients' ability to sue drugmakers if the Supreme Court further restricts the suits.

He further said that a federal ban on lawsuits “would relieve drug companies of their responsibility to make products as safe as possible, and especially to correct drug problems when they are most often discovered-years after their drugs are on the market.”

In November 2007, Quaid’s 2-week-old twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace developed a staph infection and had to be hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. They were mistakenly administered the wrong dose of Heparin because both the 10-unit pediatric dose and the 10,000-unit adult concentration have similar labels and bottles. Fortunately, the error was remedied and the twins survived with no permanent damage, although long-term effects are yet unknown.

Following the incident, Quaid filed a lawsuit against drugmaker Baxter Healthcare claiming the manufacturer was negligent in packaging different doses of the product in similar vials and with similar labels.

Baxter relabeled heparin before the twins were born but did not recall the drug stock with the similar labels. The company has denied any wrongdoing saying the overdose resulted from human error and is seeking to use the doctrine of federal preemption to shield it from any civil liability.