Myth Busting
As long as I have been in the jewelry business (and that is a long time) Tom Chatham and his family have been making beautiful 'synthetic' gems. Rubies, sapphires and emeralds, and multiple other gems, are all made out of the same raw materials which are used by the earth to birth the natural ones. The difference is, these are man assisted. Not fakes, or imitations, the real gem, just not retrieved from the wild. No one gets bribed or forced to mine in horrible condition