While the answer is probably yes, the correct answer is that she only got swindled if what she paid for doesn't work.

Proving that it doesn't work without testing is difficult; hell, proving that it did work, and the purchased items were the cause... is just as difficult.

The problem with Homeopathic remedies is that they are unregulated by the FDA, and so you've got every idiot with a pill press coming up with some kind of crazy concoction which he is able to label as the cure all to everything from chapped lips to bowel cancer.

But there are some serious practitioners of different types of medicine that, due to non-conforming categorization, fall under the guise of homeopathics simply because there isn't another name which is easily identifiable. Many people simply can't decipher between alternative medicine and homeopathics, and because homeopathics are so easily recognized, many forms of alternative medicine are simply lumped in as homeopathics simply because it's recognizable... even though it's not.

A perfectly legitimate example of this is practitioners of Sho Tai, which is simply reading the body's symptoms in a non-invasive manner, the counterpart being the ascription of using natural food groups, vitamins and minerals and some herbal supplements, and exercise to reduce chronic the effect of chronic ailments.

Just to provide a bit of background... I'm a scientist, I only am swayed by data and facts, and I'm not interested in any hokum pseudoscience. But I decided to go see a guy who was trained in this technique as a screen prior to deciding if I would refer my partner who was suffering from Crohn's colitus which was inflamed and giving her a rotten time.

At the time when I went in, I was suffering from a hangover (had just been to the Calgary stampede the week before) and was highly skeptical. But all the guy did was look in my ears, tongue and did some tapping with his finger around my chest and he basically nailed down EVERY thing I was suffering from:

• you're dehydrated
• your liver is in rough shape
• you drank too much milk in your late teens/early twenties and you're still getting too much milky foods
• you smoked some pot/tobacco at some point and you've still got telltails (thats like 15 years ago)
• you have allergies as a result of your liver being badly abused in your twenties

I was blown away, because every single thing he mentioned were bang on, like, EXACT. About a year before I'd gone for alergy testing and I was allergic to dust mite protein which is kinda like being allergic to dust. When I was in my late teens I was playing oodles of basketball and the only way for me to get enough to feel full, ever, was to down huge amounts of milk. I had no idea it was going to have long term effects...Anyway, whatever, he said there were some easy ways for me to fix myself up. He said I could buy some herbal remedies that would help, but he said it was possible to adjust how I lived and I'd be fine, plus he said there were some simple home-remedies that are very effective and cheap... So I was like, ok sweet, what do I do?

So he banged off a list:

• carry water with you everywhere and drink that instead of coffee
• try to operate on a balanced sleep/exercise schedule (was hard since I was working some nights and school in the day)
• cut out coffee, cheese, milk and dairy products completely for 6 months
• drink less booze period, and if you do, follow up with lots of water
• once you start being less drowsy regularly, twice a week start having a glass of grapefruit juice with a couple table spoons of olive oil
• keep doing exercise that utilizes arm movements as some glands or something in your arms help alleviate allergic responses.

So I tried all that and I'm doing pretty well 10 years later.

Go figure... Now, I'm not saying everyone practicing homepathy is the same or even remotely as knowledgeable or as capable as this dude practicing Sho-tai (I think he told me he trained for 8 years or something in China, plus he did a full PhD in western medicine), so if you generalize all alternative medicine as homeopathy, and reject all of it under the guise of homeopathy, and reject all alternative medicine simply because it's not regulated... you'd be limiting yourself to western medicine as the be all and end all... which, if you've done your homework, is riddled with inconsistencies and suffers from conflicting interests (namely, in the US doctors get commissions for selling prescriptions to patients).