Is stem cell research the same as cloning?

No. Stem cell research involves only cells, not cloning. The term “cloning” usually conjures the idea of duplicating an organism. This is known as “reproductive cloning” and it is prohibited by California law even to experiment with human reproductive cloning. Some people confuse this type of illegal cloning with a legal type of copying of cells in a petri dish, called “therapeutic cloning” or Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), that involves the transfer of DNA into an egg cell which could produce stem cells for medical purposes. It is biologically impossible to create a cloned human through this method. Learn more about the different types of stem cells.