(CBS) Because the deaths occur one at a time, all over the country over an extended time period, Quaid says the issue has slipped under the public's radar. "It's bigger than AIDS. It's bigger than breast cancer. It's bigger than automobile accidents. And, yet, no one seems to be really be aware of the problem," he says.

The causes range from misdiagnosis to surgical errors to medication mistakes like the accidental Heparin overdose that that nearly killed the Quaid twins, an occurrence that’s not all that unusual, according to Diane Cousins. She's the vice president of U.S. Pharmacopeia, a non-profit public health group that maintains one of the largest databases on medication errors.

"What we see with Heparin is that it is almost always in the list of top ten drugs that are reported for medication errors, and almost always in the top ten that are harmful," Cousins tells Kroft.

"What is it about Heparin that there's so many mistakes?" Kroft asks.

"Well, Heparin is very commonly used in the hospital. And the number of opportunities for error are very high," she explains.

But Cousins says another contributing factor with Heparin is labeling that can easily lead to mistakes. The 10-unit pediatric dose and the 10,000-unit adult dose come in vials of identical size and shape and in different shades of blue that can easily be confused, if not seen in reference to each other. And they are not the only drugs with that problem.

Asked to give some examples, Cousins, showing two medications, tells Kroft, "In this case, we have a solution of Lidocaine, which is an anesthetic often used to swab a child's throat or mouth for mouth pain. Here, you have lithium oral solution used for manic depression."

"Lithium is not something you'd wanna give a child. Absolutely not," she says.

The two small vials Cousins used as an example both have blue caps and cluttered labels, but one contains a hormone and the other a children's antibiotic.

"If you're at arms' length, it's hard enough to read these labels because of their type size," Cousins says.

"And I'd need my reading glasses," Kroft remarks.

Baxter International, which manufactures the Heparin given to the Quaid twins, was fully aware that there had been fatal mistakes that may have been caused by confusion over its labeling.

When the three infants in Indianapolis died after receiving an adult dose, Baxter issued a nationwide safety alert and last October, began shipping Heparin with a redesigned, peel-off label to end the confusion. What it didn't do was recall the old stock that was sitting in hospitals all over the country, including Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

"And as a result, our kids were given an old stock which was basically the same packaging and form that the kids in Indiana had gotten. Now, they recall toasters. They recall trucks. They recall dog food that came from China last year. But they don't recall medicine that kills people if you give it in the wrong dosage," Dennis Quaid tells Kroft.

The Quaids believe that Baxter was the first link in a series of events that led to the overdosing of their infants and they're suing the company for negligence on behalf of their children.

Produced by Ira Rosen
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