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Woman dies after ChatGPT allegedly tells her to stop taking epilepsy medication: lawsuit (people.com)
submitted 1 day ago* by to c/health@lemmy.world
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Bowen Wan’s family has filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT’s parent company, claiming the bot told her to taper off her epilepsy medication, which led to her death

The family of a woman who died after she stopped taking her epilepsy medication has filed a lawsuit against an AI company they claim encouraged her to taper off taking the lifesaving drug.

Bowen Wan began messaging ChatGPT in February 2023, finding companionship in the AI bot, The New York Times reports. She was 28 and living in Seattle, far from her native rural Chinese village, Jiangsu. She asked the chatbot for medical advice after her severe epilepsy led to disability leave from her software job at Amazon.

When she was then laid off in November 2025, Wan began searching for a new job so she could maintain her green card — but was concerned that the side effects of her epilepsy medication, lamotrigine, might impact her ability to work. The lawsuit claims ChatGPT advised her to taper off taking the lamotrigine.

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[–] 188 points 1 day ago (12 children)

okay so i actually read the nyt article. she was an amazon employee, got put on disability leave because her epilepsy was worsening. then she got laid off just as she become eligible for a green card application... that's diabolical but what do you expect from amazon. so to not get deported she had to find a new job quick. and she was worried the epilepsy drug may interfere with her ability to do interviews....

literally pushed right to the edge of a cliff by the oppressive immigration policy and capitalism. and finally dealt a killing blow by an AI chatbot...

i don't know what to say? except that my blood is boiling.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Well, that's quite tragic but it seems to be more of a problem of the whole system around her layoff and immigration.
    I also think that AI companies should be accountable for what their bots say but this story is way deeper than the headline suggests, anf the core problem wasn't that an LLM told her so, but that the system made her so desperate that she took the risk to rely on an LLM for information.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    if she hadn't talked to chatgpt she would still be alive today. what are you even talking about.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    And I didn't say something different. All I said is that if the system around her wouldn't have pressured her so hard, we wouldn't be there.
    But, while we're at it, picture this: She asks a friend. "Hey, I'm scared that i won't get a job when taking this medication, and if i don't get one fast, I'll have to leave the country". The friend then says "maybe just stop taking it until you've got a job" without knowing better.
    Then we would have exactly the same situation. Why? Because she was terrified and desperate.

    And before you get that wrong: I'm not comparing talking to AI, to talking to a friend.
    I'm picturing a realistic scenario that may alternatively have happened. Same background, same outcome, just a different trigger for the outcome.

    The system fucked her, it's the cause. ChatGPT was just what loosened the hairpin trigger that could have been loosened by something else.
    ChatGPT should be held accountable. It's not a friend that just didn't know any better and tried to comfort a loved one in an awful situation. But that wasn't what my original message was about.

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  • [–] 1 point 23 hours ago

    I don't know what's the point of deliberating what "the cause" is. Everything that happened contributed to her death, and that's it. If a friend told her to stop medication, then that friend would be sued, too. Are you just try to fit this tragedy into your narrative so you can hang your slogan on it?

    And secondly, if you can't see ChatGPT as a simple extension to all the problems "the system" you kept talking about have, then you are blind. AI is a spectre that is haunting this world - a spectre of capitalism.

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  • [+] -32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    All of the info you just parroted is literally in the 3 or 4 paragraphs in the subtext you see first when coming to the comment section....

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