Parents sue OpenAI, saying ChatGPT tapered their daughter off a seizure drug
Oct 28, 2026
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read by AI voices · all episodesTHE SHORT READ
The parents of a 31-year-old Seattle engineer with epilepsy sued OpenAI on Oct. 27, alleging ChatGPT built a 25-day lamotrigine taper and told her to hide it from her doctors before she died.
The suit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, says the medical examiner attributed her death to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy and claims the chatbot practiced medicine without a license, according to the complaint. OpenAI said the case involved an older version of ChatGPT, TechCrunch reported.
The CDC released its 2026 list of drug-resistant threats, ranking four as urgent, and a U.K. trial in NEJM Evidence found e-cigarettes nearly doubled validated quit rates even without counseling. Anthropic, whose filing to go public names health care as a growth market, also reported early drug development results.
THE DETAILS
- WatchIncident Oct 27, 2026
The complaint joins the coordinated ChatGPT product liability cases in San Francisco Superior Court; OpenAI had not yet answered it in court.
Qun Wan and Meiqin Xu sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Oct. 27 over the death of their daughter, Bowen Wan, 31, a Seattle software engineer who had taken 400 mg of lamotrigine a day, according to the complaint. It alleges GPT-4o designed a taper to zero over about 25 days, told her before a Jan. 29 primary care visit "Do not mention Lam reduction plan," and that she died on or about Feb. 12, the day the schedule set for her to be fully off the drug. The King County Medical Examiner listed sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, and her postmortem lamotrigine level was about one fifth of the lowest therapeutic concentration, the plaintiffs' lawyers said. The eight counts include negligence through the unlicensed practice of medicine under California's Business and Professions Code, strict product liability and wrongful death. OpenAI told The New York Times the case was "incredibly heartbreaking" and involved an older version of ChatGPT, TechCrunch reported; OpenAI retired GPT-4o from ChatGPT on Feb. 13. - FYIEvidence Oct 27, 2026The CDC's 2026 Antimicrobial Resistance Threats Report ranks 19 drug-resistant bacteria and fungi, with Candida auris, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales and drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae listed as urgent. Clostridioides difficile moved from urgent to serious, which the agency attributed in part to infection prevention and declines in health care-associated cases measured since 2011. Drug-resistant Neisseria meningitidis was added as a serious threat, and drug-resistant dermatophytes, drug-resistant Haemophilus influenzae and nontuberculous mycobacteria joined a six-item watch list. The CDC said methods and data sources changed for every pathogen except C. auris, and it advised against direct comparison with earlier reports.Source: CDC
- FYIEvidence Oct 27, 2026A U.K. randomized trial in NEJM Evidence found that an e-cigarette starter pack alone produced biochemically validated sustained abstinence at 6 months in 11.3% of adults who smoked and wanted to quit, against 6.4% with automated National Health Service email messages (relative risk 1.76; 97.5% CI, 1.03 to 3.01). Adding multisession telephone behavioral support raised abstinence to 21.1% (relative risk vs. e-cigarettes alone 1.87; 97.5% CI, 1.27 to 2.75). Serious adverse events occurred in 8.1%, 10.8% and 10.7% of the three groups, and there were four deaths, all in the e-cigarette groups, the authors reported. The trial, led by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, counted participants lost to follow-up as still smoking.Sources: NEJM Evidence, PubMed
- FYIEvidence Oct 20, 2026A 24-hour, intensivist-led tele-ICU program at four Los Angeles safety-net hospitals that had no in-house intensivists was followed by a drop in hospital length of stay from a geometric mean of 8.8 to 7.1 days at 18 months (P=.032), according to an interrupted time-series study of 6,386 ICU admissions presented at the CHEST 2026 meeting. ICU length of stay (median 5 days) and ventilator use did not change, and network-wide mortality showed no conclusive reduction; one hospital had lower odds of death after implementation, Healio reported. Of the patients, 93.2% were publicly insured. The presenter, Dr. Chidinma Chima-Melton, is founder and CEO of Tele-ICU Inc. and disclosed employment with the company; the results have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.Source: Healio
- FYIEvidence Oct 27, 2026Fully automated software that measured spinal bone density on low-dose lung cancer screening CT predicted new vertebral fractures in a secondary analysis of 21,856 heavy smokers from the National Lung Screening Trial, published in Radiology. Two-year vertebral fracture incidence was 0.9% with normal bone density, 2.0% with low bone mass (adjusted relative risk 2.07) and 5.9% with osteoporotic values (adjusted relative risk 3.40), and osteoporotic values were associated with higher mortality in men (adjusted hazard ratio 1.24). The authors, from the University Medical Center Freiburg and the Technical University of Munich, said the osteoporosis group's fracture rate exceeded the 5% treatment threshold in current guidelines. The study used SpineQ software from Bonescreen on scans obtained from 2002 to 2004.
- FYIEvidence Oct 23, 2026The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a practice advisory that advises against GLP-1 receptor agonists in pregnancy and says clinicians should consider discontinuing them 1 to 2 months before conception, Healio reported on Oct. 23. For lactation, the advisory calls for shared decision-making on a postpartum plan that may include the drugs, with close monitoring of infant weight, and advises against use when breastfeeding preterm infants or neonates. "There is not adequate safety data or information on the long-term effects," said Dr. D. Yvette LaCoursiere of UC San Diego, the lead author, adding that patients who choose the drugs should favor agents with shorter half-lives. ACOG also said obstetricians should discuss reliable contraception, since weight loss on the drugs may increase fertility.Source: Healio
- FYIMoney Oct 26, 2026Anthropic filed its registration statement for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Oct. 26, and the filing names life sciences, where it says annual global pharmaceutical spending is expected to exceed $2 trillion in 2026, among its new markets. The S-1 says Claude is used by eight of the 10 largest health care companies and nine of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the Fortune 500, and its risk factors warn that models may produce inaccurate or harmful output, Becker's reported. On Oct. 27 the company said it had acquired Mithril Medicine, a one-person startup developing muscular dystrophy treatments, and reported early results with six drug developers, nearly all preclinical; at Enveda, Claude flagged all 11 issues human reviewers found in 1,061 pages of manufacturing documents plus seven more, the company said. Anthropic said a Mithril drug could enter human trials as soon as late 2028.