Tuesday saw the introduction of H.R. 3798, a bill by U.S. Representative Steve Israel that would establish grants through the Department of Health and Human Services to train school nurses in how to deal with certain health care problems. Put that way, the bill sounds entirely reasonable. Consider the particular health care problems that Israel’s legislation would address, however, and the idea seems much more questionable.

The grants would pay for the training of school nurses in how to “respond to a biological or chemical attack or an outbreak of pandemic influenza”.

First, let’s consider the scenario of biological attack or chemical attack. There has never been a biological weapons or chemical weapons attack on a school in the United States. Given an infinite amount of time, such an event will happen in some school somewhere, but plenty of other terrible things would probably happen as well – student-on-student cannibalism, meteorite strike, eruption of a new volcano. Grants might as well be provided in order to train nurses to deal with attacks by zoo animals, because school children go to zoos, and given an infinite amount of time, it’s a sure bet that a lion or gorilla is going to escape its cage and attack a child going on a field trip.

If schools are a target of chemical or biological warfare or terrorism, which schools? Any school could be the target of such an attack, so will all school nurses across America be trained? If the threat is really serious, then how could Congressman Israel justify withholding training from all school nurses?

Also, if there is a chemical weapons attack, or biological weapons attack against a school, medical staff from outside the school would surely arrive very quickly. A school nurse would become an extra set of helping hands, but not essential – if the nurse were not already incapacitated by the attack in the first place.

What scenario did Representative Israel imagine? That a school would be attacked with sarin nerve gas, and groups of students, 5 at a time, would be sent to walk, not run, to the nurse’s office for treatment?

As for training school nurses in methods of dealing with a pandemic flu outbreak, well, they’re already doing that just fine. Pandemic means “prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world” – and pandemic flu arrives in the United States most years. This year is no different. Nurses are already trained in how to deal with cases of the flu, I believe.

Congressman Israel’s bill ranges from the outrageously implausible to the mundane. What’s next? A bill to establish grants to train school nurses in how to deal with hostile invasions from the planet Mars, and skinned knees?