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 .  