Appearing before Congress on Wednesday, American actor Dennis Quaid testified about the nightmare his newborn twins were put through last year when they were accidentally administrated 1,000 times the normal dose of a blood thinner.

Joining a group of doctors and legal experts Quaid, who filed a lawsuit against drug producer Baxter Healthcare after his babies were nearly killed after being given the wrong version of Heparin, because both the 10-unit pediatric dose and the 10,000-unit adult concentration have similar labels and bottles, urged legislators to make sure families can sue drug and medical device makers over such dangerous medication errors.

"I am in the entertainment industry, but what happened to us, and what is happening in the courts of our country, is no fiction," Quaid said in a statement prepared for members of the House panel. "It is all too real. That is why I have decided to speak out and do something."

The 54-year-old movie star claimed that some 7,000 Americans die every year from medication errors.

Drug companies argued that federal regulation should pre-empt the filing of lawsuits under state law, a matter that will come before the Supreme Court later this year in a case from Vermont.

"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 the hearing.

The House Reform and Government Oversight Committee is trying to decide whether or not the Food and Drug Administration must side with drug makers, since they are also technically responsible for approving the labels on the drugs.

In November 2007, Quaid's twins, Thomas and Zoe, were only 2-weeks-old when they developed a staph infection and had to be hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. They were mistakenly administrated the wrong dose of Heparin causing them massive bleeding. Fortunately, the error was remedied and the twins survived with no permanent damage, although long-term effects are yet unknown.

Preparing for the case, Quaid exposed another case at a hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, where three babies died and three were injure in 2006, because of the same error caused by similar labeling. Four months after that incident, he said, Baxter sent a warning to hospitals regarding the potential for mistakes. Seven months after that, Baxter received permission to change the labels. However, Quaid said, Baxter failed to recall the previous bottles that were in hospitals.

"They recall automobiles, they recall toasters, they even recall dog food," Quaid said. "Although mistakes did occur at Cedars, the overdosing of our twins was a chain of events of human error -- and the first link in that chain was Baxter."

Questioned over his choice not to sue the hospital and the medical stuff who were responsible for the mistake, Quaid explained he had plenty of time to do that, and his intentions are not to sue people, nor bring down the medical institutions.

"Like many Americans, I believed that a big problem in our country was frivolous lawsuits," the actor said. "But now I know that the courts are often the only path to justice."