How Instagram wellness guru Belle Gibson faked cancer – and caused a scandal

A brand new Netflix miniseries tells the story of an Australian influencer who lied about having a terminal sickness to advertise various therapies. A decade on, it stays a warning.

Again in 2013, a exceptional, against-all-odds story of survival hit the headlines when a younger girl launched what would develop into a best-selling wellness app with recommendation on how she had crushed most cancers. Simply 4 years earlier in 2009, Australian blogger Belle Gibson, then aged 20, had, by her personal account, been recognized with a “malignant mind most cancers” and been given “six weeks, 4 months tops” to reside. Nonetheless, she claimed that she had chosen to withdraw from chemotherapy and radiotherapy therapy, and had as an alternative launched into “a quest to heal myself naturally… through nutrition, patience, determination and love”. 

Amassing 200,000 followers on-line on Instagram – then in its early days – who avidly adopted her wellness journey, she then launched a best-selling wellness and diet app, adopted by a cookbook, known as The Entire Pantry, crediting her eating regimen for curing her of her terminal sickness, and provoking others to observe her in “empowering myself to save my own life“. She was dubbed “essentially the most inspiring girl you have met this yr” by Elle Australia, whereas in 2014, Cosmopolitan gave her a “Enjoyable, Fearless Feminine” award.

Nonetheless, it was all a lie. Gibson had by no means been recognized with a mind most cancers, nor the “most cancers in my blood, spleen, mind, uterus, and liver” that she subsequently claimed she had additionally been recognized with in a 2014 Instagram submit, when rumblings first started to floor in Australian media that she could have been a fraud. Lastly, in April 2015, she admitted the reality in an interview with Women’s Weekly. “No, none of it is true,” she stated, however refusing to take additional duty, she added, opaquely: “I’m nonetheless leaping between what I believe I do know and what’s actuality. I’ve lived it and I am not likely there but.”

This obfuscation of actuality – and the psychological gymnastics of Gibson’s “explanations” for her actions – are the spine of Apple Cider Vinegar, a shiny and poppy Netflix miniseries dramatisation of the entire scandal, launched this week. Showrunner Samantha Strauss leans into Gibson’s shaky relationship with fact in the best way she tells the story. From the chaotic timeline, which jumps between characters and occasions from pre-2009 by way of to 2015, by way of to the best way it blends reported details with fictionalised sequences – a campy montage the place the lead characters lip-sync alongside to Britney Spears’ Poisonous; the looks of a physician character who Gibson claims handled her, however has by no means been confirmed to exist – the miniseries makes it purposely tough ever to have the ability to grasp what actually occurred. That being stated, how may a present primarily based on a pathological liar ever be performed absolutely straight? 

Notably following the fallout from Baby Reindeer last year – Netflix is being sued by a lady who claims she was recognized from the sequence, which acknowledged “It is a true story” originally of each episode – Apple Cider Vinegar additionally caveats the drama with a barely totally different disclaimer every episode, similar to: “It is a true-ish story primarily based on a lie,” and, “The next is impressed by a real story. Sure characters and occasions have been created or fictionalised.” 

Playful with the reality as this fictionalisation could be, it actually makes for a compelling – and surprising – yarn. Following within the well-trodden footsteps of different scammer TV dramas, Apple Cider Vinegar positions itself – each in model and topic – alongside the likes of fellow Netflix miniseries Inventing Anna, which centered on “pretend heiress” Anna Delvey/Sorokin, convicted of tried grand larceny and larceny within the second diploma in 2019, and The Dropout (Hulu/Disney+), wherein Amanda Seyfried performed Elizabeth Holmes, the Silicon Valley fraudster who faked blood take a look at diagnoses along with her medi-tech firm, Theranos, and in 2022 was convicted of four accounts of fraud; she continues to be serving her 11 years and three months sentence. 

Like Sorokin and Holmes earlier than her, Gibson – performed with an enthralling, chilling duplicity by Dopesick’s Kaitlyn Dever – can be depicted as embodying the endgame of hustle tradition, the place “pretend it ’til you make it” finally ends up changing into a harmful ideology, relatively than a optimistic self-help mantra. 

Gibson was one of many first in a brand new breed of scammers who used social media and apps to dupe individuals – see additionally Simon Leviev, The Tinder Swindler, who conned ladies out of cash on courting apps, and Hargobind Tahilramani, The Hollywood Con Queen, who exploited individuals working in Hollywood by pretending to be well-known actors and administrators. However even in comparison with these subsequent rip-off scandals, Gibson’s fraud nonetheless stays a staggeringly merciless trick to tug; faking a terminal sickness in on-line assist teams to take advantage of susceptible individuals in a manner that accorded her industrial revenue and fame. 

“The factor you might want to perceive is Belle does not have associates, she has hosts,” says the character of Gibson’s supervisor Chanelle (Aisha Dee), who relies on her actual life former buddy, Chanelle McAuliffe. “If, and provided that, she finds you to be helpful, she’ll discover a solution to connect herself.” 

The damaging impression that Gibson’s lies had is highlighted by the juxtaposed tales of two different ladies within the sequence. Milla Blake (performed by Alycia Debnam-Carey) is a 22-year-old journalist who finds out she has epithelioid sarcoma, and blogs about her sickness. She relies on the real-life Jessica Ainscough, who rose to web fame at an identical time as Gibson along with her web site, Wellness Warrior, wherein she documented her battle with being recognized with the identical most cancers. Ainscough, too, promoted using controversial various therapies, similar to these proffered by the Gerson Institute in Mexico – which provides a therapy that claims to activate “the physique’s extraordinary skill to heal itself by way of an natural, plant-based eating regimen, uncooked juices, espresso enemas and pure dietary supplements”. Nonetheless, she later died from cancer, aged 30.

Within the sequence, Gibson turns into fixated on Blake, first changing into a part of her on-line neighborhood, then borrowing not simply her experiences of most cancers, however her tone of voice and phrases, in creating her personal social media persona. Like Blake, Gibson purports to be a trustful, loving and trustworthy buddy to her followers, giving life recommendation and closely advocating for various therapies for diseases. (For the curious – the title Apple Cider Vinegar comes from an anecdote Gibson informed wherein she drank the liquid and claimed to have rid herself of a tapeworm from her mouth.) Each ladies are proven bleakly competing to develop into social media’s favorite cancer-fighting influencer. 

A 3rd character, Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), is fictional, however an necessary particular person to weave into the story nonetheless; she represents an unquantifiable variety of Gibson’s followers who have been truly recognized with most cancers, and will have been influenced to cease typical, medically-approved therapies in favour of combating their sickness along with her solutions of, amongst different issues, consuming natural greens, and attempting Ayurvedic drugs, oxygen remedy and craniosacral remedy.  It is simple to see how the healthful, picture-perfect world of flower crowns and sisterhood wellness retreats posted on social media can be an alluring and comforting secure area for these in want, however the sequence whips away these rigorously constructed pictures to indicate the illness of the fact beneath. 

As detailed within the sequence, Gibson’s publicity got here by the hands of two investigative journalists at Melbourne newspaper The Age, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, who co-authored the 2017 e-book that the sequence relies on, The Girl Who Fooled the World. In early 2015, they uncovered that only an estimated A$7000 (£3,500) of A$300,000 (£150,000) that Gibson had claimed to have given to quite a lot of charities had been paid. As soon as these monetary irregularities got here out, suspicions then arose concerning the conflicting tales round her well being, and after her Ladies’s Weekly confessional interview, she took half in one other baffling TV tell-all interview on 60 Minutes Australia in June 2015. On this, she as soon as once more admitted to her deception to some extent, but additionally claimed to be the sufferer, saying she had been “duped” and “been taken for a experience” by the aforementioned, never-seen quack physician, apparently known as “Mark Johns”, one more time “Dr Phil”.

Within the present’s exploration of the pull of what Gibson and different fraudulent well being and spirituality gurus supply, the character of Gibson’s LA disaster administration PR, Hek (Phoenix Raei) will get to the core of it. “Is that not slightly bit magic?” he asks. “Drink slightly bit of these things and also you’re all cleansed? Pure once more. How hopeful is that? I might pay something simply to really feel slightly bit higher, a balm to take the sting off, a solution to soothe this… tragedy of being human.”

Prone to amass an enormous Netflix viewership, Apple Cider Vinegar must also be an alarm bell for anybody nonetheless blindly taking medical recommendation from influencers with no medical {qualifications} however a big on-line following. The worldwide wellness trade was worth $6.3 trillion in 2023, nevertheless it continues to include darker parts, with instances of individuals manipulating and hurting these in search of holistic therapies. Solely just lately, in December, Hongchi Xiao, an alternative healer, was convicted of manslaughter after a 71-year-old diabetic girl stopped taking her insulin whereas on a retreat he was working; and in 2024, the Brazilian wellness influencer Kat Torres was found guilty in 2024 of human trafficking and slavery.

In one other defiance of narrative conference, Apple Cider Vinegar subverts the “what occurred subsequent?” postscript that you just usually get on the finish of a true-story dramatisation. Because the acquainted textual content begins to scroll throughout the display (“In 2017, the Federal Courtroom of Australia discovered Belle Gibson responsible of deceptive and…”), Dever’s Gibson interrupts and tells the viewers: “You realize what? You’ll be able to Google it”. Go on, she chides the viewers, go and get your data from the web – however, after all, is not that exactly the place all this hassle began? 

As apt as this sleight of hand is, it additionally seems like a little bit of a cop-out, permitting the complete extent of Gibson’s crimes to go unexamined. In March 2017, as reported by the BBC, Gibson was discovered responsible of 5 breaches of client regulation, and in September that yr, she was ordered by the federal court docket in Melbourne to repay A$410,000 (£205,000) to the state of Victoria for her false charity guarantees. Nonetheless The Guardian reported in 2021 that her home had been raided once more, as a result of nonetheless unpaid fines, which they stated now amounted to greater than A$500,000 (£250,000).

Neither Apple Cider Vinegar, nor her earlier two tell-all interviews resolve why Gibson carried out her elaborate hoax. Was it due to a troubled childhood, as she claimed, the place she ran away from dwelling aged 12? Was it for fame and a spotlight, or was the entire charade purely a money-making scheme?

Some would possibly attribute Gibson’s knowingly false claims to Munchausen syndrome (a situation additionally known as factitious dysfunction, and outlined as individuals claiming to be unwell to “obtain some type of psychological validation, similar to consideration, sympathy, or bodily care”). In a 2015 article for the Guardian, neurologist Jules Montague wrote: “Factitious issues and malingering can overlap. Exterior incentives won’t drive the preliminary behaviour however can observe thereafter. Gibson might need initially loved taking part in the sick position. However she did not flip away the cash that flowed afterwards.”

In 2000, Physician Marc Feldman got here up with the extra particular time period Munchausen by internet (MBI). MBI is now defined by the NHS as “the place an individual joins an web assist group for individuals with a critical well being situation, after which claims to have the sickness themselves”, which maybe could be extra relevant to Gibson. As as to if she’s a fantasist, or extra a “master manipulator of the truth“, as Tara Brown, the 60 Minutes interviewer known as her, there are all the time questions over whether or not individuals who show indicators of Munchausen syndrome or MBI are sufferers or perpetrators. Feldman informed The Guardian in 2015: “Generally they’re each, however within the Gibson case, the audacity of her ruses and the [alleged] misappropriation of monies could make the phrase ‘perpetrator’ extra acceptable.”

“There have all the time been snake-oil salespeople,” journalist Toscano informed The Guardian in 2017. “There have all the time been individuals like [Gibson]. However the place this story differs is her explosion to success, and her unbelievable attain was made potential by quite a lot of intensely fashionable forces.”

Gibson’s is a disturbing story; an ideal storm involving web tradition at a time when it was nonetheless comparatively naïve about scammers; a well being and wellness neighborhood in search of to seek out the nice in everybody; and a con artist who maybe suffered along with her personal delusions. In any case, how may she probably have believed that the reality would not come out in the long run?

Netflix is eager to stress that Gibson has not been paid for her story and it is not recognized but what she makes of all of it. In truth, Gibson has hardly ever been seen in public for the reason that scandal erupted. In 2020, she appeared in a video in Melboourne claiming to be a part of the Omoro neighborhood, an Ethiopian ethnic group, and stated that she was now known as “Sabontu”. She additionally claimed she wished to lift funds for the neighborhood. In February 2024, a information reporter from Channel 9’s A Present Affair confronted her at a petrol station, and requested why she hadn’t paid her positive but. “Have some humanity,” she replied. “I have not paid issues as a result of I am unable to afford to”.

Whereas Gibson stays one of the vital infamous “wellness” scammers on the market, she will not be the final. Reveals like Apple Cider Vinegar are nonetheless a significant, obligatory reminder that the web is filled with individuals with rigorously constructed identities – each actual and pretend – and that the one actually wholesome plan of action is to method all of it with a dose of scepticism. 

Apple Cider Vinegar is obtainable to stream now on Netflix from 6 February