A national law barring human cloning is needed to protect the “miracle of life” from the accelerating rush of science, President Clinton said Monday, endorsing a key recommendation of a bioethics panel that began studying the issue last winter after Scottish researchers cloned a sheep.

“Attempting to clone a human being is unacceptably dangerous to the child and morally unacceptable to our society,” Clinton said in a Rose Garden ceremony, in which he accepted the report of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. “I believe strongly that this conclusion reflects a national consensus.”

Clinton said he is trying to find a middle ground that would allow people to take advantage of the medical benefits of genetic research without offending traditional moral concepts.

The bill he endorsed would ban human cloning for five years, allowing time, Clinton said, to “continue the national dialogue” on cloning - the production of genetically identical individuals.