AAAS this week urged policymakers to support research using donated fetal tissue, which was instrumental to the development of the vaccine to combat polio, and today advances efforts to better understand the Zika virus, eye disease, and human development.

AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner hailed a U.S. judge’s ruling Wednesday that allows continued federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, saying it would allow “extremely promising” medical research to advance.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth dismissed a lawsuit challenging federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, deferring to a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals that the research did not violate a federal law that bars the government from funding research that requires the destruction of embryos.