Dario: The government should continue to grant patents for all new drug compounds. Patents promote innovation by rewarding pharmaceutical companies for undertaking the costly research needed to develop new drugs. Cynthia: Promoting innovation is certainly important. For this reason, patents should be granted only for truly innovative drugs, not for minor variants of previously existing drugs. Since it is much less expensive to tweak an existing drug than to develop a wholly new one, pharmaceutical companies tend to focus primarily on the cheaper alternative. Dario and Cynthia disagree over whether ['patents should be granted for all drug compounds', 'developing truly innovative drugs is costly', 'drug patents can promote innovation', 'pharmaceutical companies have an incentive to create minor variants of existing drugs']