The strip has long been praised for its blunt tackling of social issues and taboo subjects, such as drug abuse, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diabetes, organ transplants, adoption and sexual harassment. The story's constant realism about these issues has led groups such as the Leahy Foundation to use "Rex Morgan" as a teaching tool. In the case of the Leahy Foundation, the strip has been used to teach their students about epilepsy at Harvard University. Some issues, particularly in the strip's early years, proved too controversial. In 1950, the "Newark News" refused to run one series in which a nurse tried to euthanize her sick father. The paper wrote that the sequences "dealt with an attempted mercy killing and had no place on this comic page."