Is an account of identity necessary for bioethics? What post-genomic biomedicine can teach us

•I recall some points of the relationship between identity and bioethics.•I review the main features of what has been called the epigenetic account of identity.•I focus on three issues: transplantation; conjoined twins; definition of death.•I analyze three bioethical issues dealing with the above issues.

Is a theory of identity necessary for bioethics? In this paper I investigate that question starting from an empirical explication of identity based on post-genomics, in particular on epigenetics. After analysing whether the classic problems a theory of identity has to cope with (fictional transplants; conjoined twins; and definition of death) also affect the proposed epigenetic account of identity, I deal with three topics (the assumption of moral responsibility; decision maintenance in the case of advance directives; and the attribution of value to human beings at given developmental stages) to offer an insight on the relationship between that account and bioethics.