Dr. Bernard Abrams (Jerry Lewis), an Ohio optometrist, and his wife Shirley Abrams (Patty Duke) have a six-year-old daughter that suffers from a rare form of epilepsy. The child's paraplegic doctor (Morgan Freeman) cares for her. As for the little girl's parents, they need to have a drug approved from the Food and Drug Administration. However, the process is slow and they are forced to fly to England to obtain the medication. They take their cause to the media in order to highlight their case and force the FDA to expedite its decision on use in America.