Cruise Inspires Law in California
 

Tom Cruise's decision to import an at-home sonogram machine to check out baby Suri's every move before she made her worldly debut may have seemed a little wacky to people. But one California lawmaker thinks it was a downright dangerous maneuver.

Democratic Assemblyman Ted Lieu has introduced a bill that would prohibit the selling, leasing or distributing of an ultrasound machine by California manufacturers to anyone other than licensed medical professionals. The state assembly is scheduled to debate the bill Thursday.

"If someone sees Tom Cruise buy one, they think this is the thing to do," Lieu said. "This is a public safety measure. There's really no medical reason for an untrained person to use this machine."

Although it seems difficult to believe that too many people are jumping on this particular Cruise bandwagon, as of Wednesday there was just such a device listed on eBay for $5,500. Hopefully whoever buys that also has the money to employ a fulltime doctor.

Doctors, nurses and medical technicians undergo years of training, not just to become licensed professionals but also to figure out all the knobs, switches and doodads on an ultrasound machine, which provides expectant parents with their first glimpse of a fetus's shape. Having a number of sonograms over the course of a pregnancy is recommended to monitor the baby's health in utero.

Ultrasounds are also used to check out adult's organs for irregularities and other problems and the machine needs to be set on a higher wave frequency to get the best view.

"There are a lot of settings on an ultrasound machine that you would only use on adults and not on a fetus," Dr. Miyuki Murphy, director of ultrasound for Radiological Associates of Sacramento, the largest private radiology practice in Northern California, told the Associated Press.

"Obviously, somebody enamored with their own child would want to use it all the time," Dr. Murphy said. The FDA has determined that "keepsake" fetal videos and pictures of a fetus qualify as an "unapproved" use of the machine.

Well, lucky for Suri she's out of the womb, because Cruise couldn't be more enamored of his baby girl. He appeared on CBS's The Late Show with David Letterman Tuesday night gushing, as usual, about the lovely ladies in his life.

"She's a beauty--it's crazy," Cruise told his host. "Kate and I can't take our eyes off of her." He added that his mother and Holmes' mom, who reportedly was by her daughter's side throughout the later days of her pregnancy, are dishing out lots of childrearing advice to the happy couple.