mr. speaker , janet huggins died last september . 
she was 39 years old . 
she had a 9-year-old son . 
she had no personal or family history of heart problems , but she suffered a fatal heart attack just a month after she began taking a new medicine for her early-onset arthritis . 
that medicine she took was merck 's anti-inflammatory drug , vioxx . 
cardiologist , dr . 
eric topol , and other researchers at the cleveland clinic sounded the alarm in august of 2001 . 
their article in the journal of the american medical association pointed to increased occurrence of heart problems in patients taking vioxx and similar cox-ii anti-inflammatory drugs . 
dr . 
topol even called merck 's ceo and research director to talk about his concerns . 
his calls went unanswered . 
his warnings went unheeded . 
instead , merck continued to sell vioxx , continued to spend $ 100 million a year on direct-to-consumer advertising , encouraging more and more americans to buy vioxx . 
that is what ms. huggins did . 
she was buried the same day that merck finally took vioxx off the market . 
her husband monty has filed suit against merck . 
his suit will be captured , along with thousands of other vioxx suits , under the mass actions provisions of s. 5 . 
this bill is designed to make it more difficult for monty huggins and others to pursue their claims that companies like merck will never be held accountable . 
s. 5 will make it more expensive for him and much harder for him to travel for court proceedings . 
it may even dead-end monty huggins ' claim entirely . 
federal courts have repeatedly refused to certify multistate class actions because they found them too complex to choose one state law over the other . 
so monty huggins may arrive in federal court only to find that is the end of the line . 
the bitter irony here is that vioxx claims are not really class actions at all . 
here is a good example of the sort of things settled by class action lawsuits . 
this ipod portable music player is all the rage . 
there are some people out there who thought the batteries on these things run out too quickly . 
they have filed a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer . 
if they win , everybody in the class probably gets a few bucks and the whole thing is done . 
that is what class action lawsuits are about . 
they do not generally involve personal injuries . 
they do not generally involve huge losses . 
there is a world of difference , mr. speaker , between a faulty battery in this , and the death of a 39-year-old wife and mother . 
perhaps the worst aspect of this bill is that it treats these suits the same . 
we should strip out the whole class action , the mass action provision , but that is not realistic in this political environment . 
my motion to commit prevents harm so obvious it can not be ignored by specifically exempting vioxx lawsuits . 
dr . 
topol at the cleveland clinic , who i mentioned earlier wrote , `` neither of the two major forces in this 5-and-a-half year affair , neither merck nor the fda , fulfilled its responsibilities to the public. '' this motion to commit offers an opportunity for someone at last to act responsibly . 
if we adopt this motion to commit , monty huggins will have a fighting chance for justice . 
if we do not , the u.s. house of representatives will join the list of those who betrayed the public 's trust . 
mr. speaker , i yield the reminder of my time to my friend , the gentleman from arkansas ( mr. ross ) xz4003450 . 
