Rather than using stock footage, the producers hired 500 extras for the protest march scenes featured in this episode. Many of the extras suffered from rare diseases and were disabled.
It was through advocacy from this episode, Give Me Your Weak (1982) and Seldom Silent, Never Heard (1981) ,that Jack Klugman inspired the Congressional passage of The Orphan Drug Act of 1983. The bill provided up to $15 million dollars in tax credits and a seven year monopoly on the drug, to the pharmaceutical companies, to develop new drugs for rare diseases.