It just sounds better. The producers of synthetic diamonds cringe when they hear the S-word. They are way ahead of the drug cartels that never thought of calling heroin “lab-grown opium.” The “Lab-grown” label is supposed to trigger a vision of rows of diamonds peacefully ripening in a heavenly garden. While consumers are hallucinating about guilt-free diamonds, the factories are baking fake, …oops… lab-grown diamonds in huge vats under hellish heat and immense pressure. These stones have all the physical, chemical, and optical properties of their natural counterparts. They should be called “synthetic,” just like any other artificially produced substance.