Was ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’s’ Milla Blake Based on Wellness Influencer Jessica Ainscough?

Stories about con artists and scammers are often considered less upsetting in the true crime genre because the victims tend to lose money, not their lives. To be clear, a victim is still a victim. Many people who fall for a huckster's antics are left with absolutely nothing. Sometimes the fraudster in question is trafficking in some dangerous messaging. Such is the case for Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness influencer who claimed she cured her cancer via healthy living methods.

Gibson never had cancer, but she profited off the narrative that her clean lifestyle was curing what ailed her. In turn, others who actually had cancer followed suit. Around the same time, another Australian wellness guru was also participating in similar practices, except she really had cancer. Sadly Jessica Ainscough did not survive. In the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, the character Milla Blake is kind of like Jessica. Is she real? Here's what we know.

Jessica found a fanbase and built her following via her blog, The Wellness Warrior. In it, she discussed the kind of cancer that she had which was not treatable and could only be contained for a short amount of time if Jessica had her arm amputated. In Apple Cider Vinegar, Milla Blake wrestles with the same health issues.

As far as the similarities with Jessica go, that's where it ends. The show's creator, Samantha Strauss, chose to portray Milla as someone with a Type-A personality who "felt she needed to be beautiful, she needed to be perfect, to be good enough," per SBS News.

Samantha said that Milla's choice can "be so easily dismissed by the doctors as vanity, but he's also never been a young woman having to take away something so personal as an arm." What Samantha was trying to convey was almost a punishing feeling, because Milla felt that getting sick was somehow a failure on her part.

Jessica passed away on Feb. 26, 2015, from epithelioid sarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer that affects young adults and most often first develops in the hand or arm. Doctors advised Jessica to have her arm amputated at the shoulder, which could have increased her chance of surviving for 10 years.

Her relationship with the wellness industry began in 2008 when Jessica was living in Sydney and working as the online editor for DOLLY Magazine. That April, Jessica received her epithelioid sarcoma diagnosis and learned that it doesn't respond to chemotherapy or radiation. "Essentially, my condition was incurable," she wrote for DOLLY.

After going through chemotherapy, which did not work, Jessica's medical team once again suggested she consider amputation. Instead, the wellness influencer turned to something called the Gerson Therapy, an ineffective alternative treatment that "involves daily coffee enemas, a heavy regime of dietary supplements, and following a strict organic, vegetarian diet."

Jessica's fiancé wrote a letter following her death that detailed the final weeks of her life, per the Daily Mail. Tallon Pamenter said that after speaking with "oncologists, healers and specialists around the world," Jessica began a course of targeted radiation. "This was a risky and tough decision, but Jess bravely embraced this last chance option," he said. During that time, Tallon praised her "courage and grace." Sadly it wasn't enough.