Should the family’s consent be sought for brain death testing? (This case is fictitious.) In mid-2022, the high profile case of Archie Battersbee raised a number of ethical and legal questions about the medical care of children suspected to be brain dead, particularly in the setting of family disagreement.1 2 Ultimately in Archie’s case, formal brain death testing was not possible (because he did not meet the preconditions). Proposal: informed non-dissent One potential solution would be to adopt an ‘informed non-dissent’ approach for brain death testing in children.6 This is a model that has been developed in a related context for potentially futile or medically inappropriate interventions at the end of life in critically ill children and adults.7 In such a setting, some families are emotionally unable to agree to limitations on treatment (even if they recognise that this may be in their child’s best interest).8 An informed non-dissent approach involves informing caregivers about the patient’s clinical condition and a proposed plan for further care (for example, that cardiopulmonary resuscitation would not be provided in the event of a cardiac arrest). The House of Lords has emphasised the importance of the law and ethics of medical practice moving together.17 This provides another powerful reason why the law should be interpreted in a way which permits the use of informed non-dissent to be the routine approach adopted to consent to brain death testing in this jurisdiction. In practice, as with all important issues relating to consent, the clinical record should be completed to confirm the explanation given, the parental response and the medical decision to treat informed non-dissent as implied consent to brain death testing.