Abstract
Epigenetic phenomena are known to be a root cause of many common diseases. To date, the FDA has approved four epigenetic therapies that show promising results for prolonging lives of terminal cancer patients. However, there is a relative lack of knowledge about long-term epigenetic effects, especially those that affect future generations. We propose a heightening of standards for epigenetic therapy: therapies should be targeted to specific genes in specific cells, patients’ epigenomes should be sequenced before and after treatment, and germline effects should be unacceptable. Moreover, further research should be performed to answer questions about transgenerational epigenetic effects, to analyze the effects of altered epigenomes in the long term, and to develop superior assays for screening epigenomes.