The National Institutes of Health pledged Tuesday at a private meeting of scientists who use fetal tissue that the government’s premier funder of biomedical research would continue to support such work despite a conservative broadside against it. The commitment by a senior official of NIH’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases to continue funding for researchers who are employed by the government came at the end of a seven-hour meeting with about 40 researchers from around the country, according to two participants.

The pair of scientists were part of an invitation-only workshop to evaluate the politically loaded question of whether adequate alternatives exist to fetal tissue in studies pursuing treatment and possible cures for diseases from HIV to cancers to Zika. The workshop was part of a broad audit being conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, as antiabortion activists and other social conservatives reactivate a years-old crusade against it.

Toward the meeting’s end, one of the invited scientists, Stanford University researcher Irving Weissman, pressed officials about their intentions. “I want to know the bottom line” about future funds, Weissman said afterward. Brett Giroir, the HHS assistant secretary for health, replied that at least for grants and contracts for researchers employed by universities and nongovernment labs, there will be no pause as long as experiments comply with the ethical guidelines of their universities and the federal government, as well as state laws, Weissman said.