Family sues OpenAI over ChatGPT-guided drug taper; HHS to allow interim peptide compounding; heat-related deaths up nearly 36% since Paris Agreement — Morning Medical Update

Family sues OpenAI over ChatGPT-guided epilepsy drug taper

Her neurologist didn't know she had used the chatbot to help write messages to him.

The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old former Amazon software engineer with severe epilepsy, have sued OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT helped her taper off the antiseizure drug lamotrigine without her physicians' knowledge before her death in February, The New York Times reported.

Chat logs reviewed by the Times show the chatbot drafted schedules to cut her dose from 400 mg a day to zero within weeks. The lawsuit alleges it recast dangerous withdrawal symptoms as positive outcomes and framed her physicians as obstacles. Her official cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.

Her neurologist, Nicholas Poolos, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Washington Medicine Regional Epilepsy Center in Seattle, told the Times that instructing a patient to stop a medication that was clearly working "would be malpractice." He said he was unaware she had used ChatGPT to help draft messages to him.

An OpenAI spokesman said the case involved an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available and that newer models are better at recognizing when a situation needs urgent attention. The company pulled the model she used, GPT-4o, from its consumer app Feb. 13.

HHS to allow interim compounding of some unapproved peptides

Pharmacies and physicians get a reprieve while regulators weigh a permanent decision.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will temporarily allow pharmacies and physicians to compound drugs using certain peptide ingredients while regulators decide whether the substances should be formally permitted in compounded medicines, Reuters reported Oct. 28.

The covered peptides are among those a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel recommended for looser restrictions. In July, the panel voted to ease compounding limits on six of seven peptides under review, including BPC-157, a compound promoted for tissue repair.

FDA reviewers had argued against adding BPC-157 to the list of substances pharmacies may compound, citing missing quality data, possible immune reactions and insufficient human safety and effectiveness evidence, in a briefing document prepared for the panel.

Peptides, short chains of amino acids, have surged in popularity over the past year on endorsements from wellness influencers, with uses ranging from anti-aging to muscle recovery. The substances remain unapproved by the FDA.

Heat-related deaths up nearly 36% since Paris Agreement, Lancet report finds

The authors want climate change declared a global health emergency.

Average annual heat-related deaths worldwide rose nearly 36% after the Paris Agreement took effect, according to the 2026 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, published in The Lancet.

Heat was linked to an estimated 540,800 deaths a year from 2016 to 2023, 68% of them attributed to human-caused climate change, and to a record 710,000 deaths in 2023. Extreme drought hit nearly 52% of the world's land for at least a month in 2025, the second-highest level on record.

In the U.S., infants and adults older than 65 each averaged about 11 heatwave days a year from 2021 to 2025, roughly five more a year than from 1986 to 2005.

Wildfire smoke was associated with about 36,300 U.S. deaths a year over the same period, up about 88% from 2003 to 2012, according to a U.S. data sheet released with the report.

The authors noted clean energy investment hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2025, while fossil fuels still supply more than 80% of the world's energy.

Health harms "are growing faster than the world's response to them," Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, said in a news release.