A year and a half ago, the heparin overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s twins was big news. The legal settlement just announced in the case isn’t as big of a news story to most media, but it’s also very significant.

The Associated Press reports that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has offered a $500,000 settlement in the case, which the Quaids have accepted. Half of that money will go to each of the twins: Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone. Also, Cedars-Sinai will pay for any additional medical care the Quaid twins ever need related to their injury, though they seem to have recovered.

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As the swine flu crisis nears pandemic proportions, millions worldwide brace for possible exposure to a virus more dangerous than many other flu bugs — a virus so dangerous it could kill.

But while fighting swine flu is vital, in some ways the media coverage of it and public panic toward it are disproportionate, at least in the context of other deadly infections which assail us daily and rarely are noted on the public radar that swine flu now commands.

These other afflictions are varied and many, but they include what is virtually a hidden epidemic: hospital acquired infections.

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