EthicsUniverse Terms of Service
Last updated: October 24, 2026
EthicsUniverse is run by OncUniverse LLC, a Pennsylvania limited liability company doing business as EthicsUniverse ("EthicsUniverse", "we", "us"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") are the agreement between you and us for your use of ethicsuniverse.com, the question bank, flashcards, notebook, and everything else we offer through the site (together, the "Service").
We have tried to write these Terms so a busy medical student can read them without a law degree. The plain language is deliberate. It does not make the Terms any less binding.
1. Accepting these Terms
By creating an account, opening a question, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.
If you are using EthicsUniverse on behalf of a school, residency program, or other organization, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" in these Terms means both you and the organization.
2. Eligibility: who can use EthicsUniverse
EthicsUniverse is built for medical students, residents, physicians, and other health professionals preparing for licensing examinations or studying medical ethics. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account, or the age of legal majority where you live if that is higher. The Service is not directed at children. We do not knowingly allow anyone under 13 (or under 16 in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom) to use it.
You may not use the Service if you have previously been banned from it or if doing so would violate any law that applies to you.
3. What EthicsUniverse is
EthicsUniverse is an independent study resource. It provides multiple-choice questions on medical ethics, each with a written explanation and citations to the underlying literature, together with flashcards and a personal notebook where you can save your own notes and SuperNovas. (A SuperNova is the single, portable takeaway rule we distill from each question.)
We add, revise, correct, and occasionally retire questions as the literature and professional guidance change. The number and mix of questions, the features available, and the way the Service looks and works will change over time. We do not promise that any particular question, feature, or piece of content will remain available.
4. What EthicsUniverse is not
This section matters. Please read it.
Not affiliated with any examining body. EthicsUniverse is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or otherwise connected to the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), the USMLE program, the American Medical Association (AMA), the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), or any medical school, licensing board, or professional society. "USMLE" is a registered trademark of its owners, the Federation of State Medical Boards and the National Board of Medical Examiners. We use the term only to describe the examinations our users are preparing for. Our questions are written by us and are not actual, retired, or leaked examination items.
Not medical, clinical, or legal advice. The Service exists to help you learn and practice reasoning about medical ethics for study purposes. Nothing in it is medical advice, clinical guidance, or legal advice, and nothing in it creates a physician-patient, attorney-client, consultant, or advisory relationship between you and us or between you and any author or reviewer. Ethical and legal standards differ between states and countries, change over time, and turn on facts that a practice question cannot capture. You must not rely on the Service for real patient care. The same goes for advising colleagues, making institutional decisions, and forming legal conclusions. For real cases, consult your institution's ethics committee, legal counsel, and the professional and regulatory guidance that applies where you practice.
No promise about your exam. We cannot promise that using EthicsUniverse will improve your score or help you pass any examination. Exam content, blueprints, and scoring are controlled by the examining bodies, not by us, and reasonable experts can disagree about the answer to an ethics question.
5. Your account
You sign up with an email address. You agree to give us accurate information and to keep it current. Your account is for you alone. You may not share your login, let anyone else use your account, or use someone else's.
You are responsible for keeping your login credentials and any sign-in links or codes we send you confidential, and for all activity that happens under your account. Treat a sign-in link like a password. If you think someone else has accessed your account, tell us right away at support@ethicsuniverse.com so we can help secure it.
We may refuse, suspend, or reclaim an account if we reasonably believe it is being shared, used to copy content, or used in violation of these Terms.
6. Acceptable use and protecting the content
The questions, explanations, citations, flashcards, and SuperNovas took a long time to research, write, and review. They are the product. So these rules are strict.
You may use the Service to study, on your own devices, for your own personal, non-commercial education. You may keep notes in your notebook and refer to them later. That is the intended use.
You may not, and may not help or allow anyone else to:
- copy, download, print, transcribe, photograph, screenshot, or screen-record questions, explanations, citations, flashcards, or SuperNovas for the purpose of sharing them with anyone else, or in bulk for any purpose;
- share, post, sell, trade, or otherwise redistribute any of our content, whether on a forum, a group chat, a file-sharing service, a study group drive, another question bank, or anywhere else;
- scrape, crawl, or otherwise use bots, scripts, browser extensions, or automated tools to access, collect, or extract content;
- use our content, in whole or in part, to build a competing product, create derivative questions, or train or fine-tune a machine-learning or artificial-intelligence model;
- share your account or credentials with anyone, or use an account that is not yours;
- remove, hide, blur, alter, or circumvent the watermark, access controls, or any other measure we use to protect the content;
- reverse engineer, decompile, or probe the Service or its infrastructure, or interfere with its operation or security;
- upload or store in your notebook anything that is unlawful, infringes someone else's rights, contains malware, or is meant to harass or deceive; or
- misrepresent who you are or your relationship to us or to any examining body.
Watermarking. Pages that display our content carry a watermark tied to your account. If our content appears somewhere it should not, the watermark lets us identify the account it came from. By using the Service you consent to this.
Consequences. If you break these rules, we may suspend or terminate your account without refund, remove content, and pursue any legal remedies available to us, including claims for copyright infringement and for the losses caused by redistribution. We would much rather not. Please do not put us in that position.
7. Who owns what
Our content. The questions, explanations, citations, flashcards, SuperNovas, software, design, text, graphics, and the EthicsUniverse name and logo belong to OncUniverse LLC or our licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual-property laws in the United States and elsewhere. These Terms give you a limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Service for the purposes described in Section 6 while your access is active. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership to you.
Works we cite. Our citations point to articles, guidelines, statutes, cases, and books owned by their authors and publishers. We do not claim any rights in those works. A citation is a reference. If you want to read the cited work, you will need to obtain it through the publisher, your library, or another lawful source.
Your notes. You own the notes and other material you write in your notebook. The app stores and displays them in your browser, separated by account. They do not sync between devices, and we do not hold a server backup. Clearing this site's browser data removes them; deleting your account does not remotely clear them from your devices. You are responsible for what you write there.
Feedback. If you send us suggestions, corrections, or ideas about the Service, you agree that we may use them without any obligation to you. We read them and we are grateful for them, especially corrections to a question.
Infringement claims. If you believe something on the Service infringes your copyright or other rights, write to us at support@ethicsuniverse.com with enough detail for us to find and evaluate the material.
8. Paid access, billing, and refunds
Paid checkout is not available today. The purchase and payment provisions below describe the planned paid offering and do not mean a purchase can currently be made.
What you are buying. When paid access is available, you can choose 30 days for US $19 or 90 days for US $39. Both passes include the same full-bank features, starting the moment your payment is confirmed. Each is a one-time purchase for a fixed period. It does not renew automatically, and we will not charge you again unless you choose to buy another access period. Your existing complimentary access is preserved; no purchase is needed while your full access is active.
Payment through Stripe. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc. When you pay, you are entering your card details into Stripe's systems under Stripe's terms and privacy policy. We never receive or store your full card number. We receive a confirmation of the transaction, the amount, and limited details such as the card brand and last four digits, which we use to manage your access and respond to billing questions.
Prices and taxes. Prices are shown in US dollars. Where sales tax, VAT, or similar taxes apply, they may be added at checkout or included in the displayed price, as the law requires. We may change prices for future purchases at any time. A price change never affects access you have already paid for.
Planned refund policy. Request a full refund within seven days of purchase when fewer than 50 distinct eligible non-sample questions have been answered after that purchase. All 20 designated free-sample question identities are excluded, including answers after purchase. Trial attempts and repeat answers do not count; each eligible question counts once. Refunds affect only that purchase's access. Mandatory consumer rights are preserved. Contact support@ethicsuniverse.com to request a refund. Paid checkout remains closed; final purchase terms will be shown before it opens. These planned terms do not rewrite an existing purchase's recorded policy or restrict rights that applicable law requires.
Failed payments and chargebacks. If a payment fails or is reversed, we may suspend the associated access until it is resolved. Please contact us before disputing a charge with your bank. We can usually sort things out faster and with less hassle for everyone.
9. Free and early access
Free access follows the terms recorded for your grant or invitation. We do not automatically convert it to paid access or charge you when it expires. After expiry, an optional paid pass may be offered only if checkout later becomes available, and buying it requires a separate affirmative purchase. Existing recorded founding-period grants retain their recorded terms, including any notice commitments. New 30-day invitations do not confer founding-period access. Early-access users may see unfinished features, bugs, and content that is still under review.
If you have free access, every other part of these Terms applies to you exactly as it applies to paying users, including Section 6.
Invitation feedback access. Invitation access starts with 30 days from redemption. A qualifying contribution may receive one manually approved 30-day extension in total, added to the existing expiry date rather than the approval date. Feedback after that extension does not add another term. A specific issue, question, suggestion, or brief account of the features you used with no problems qualifies. Praise alone, blank messages, and repeated copy-paste do not. Feedback is welcome at any time, including after the extension or after access pauses. If you already contributed, you do not need a final form or another message at the end. Late approval keeps the original expiry as its starting point and may not restore access if that extended term has already ended. We review contributions manually. Qualification does not depend on praise, a positive opinion, or whether we adopt a suggestion. Public reviews are never a renewal condition.
For eligible accounts registered after the email program launch that opt in, an email reminder is scheduled seven days before expiry. After the extension has been used, that optional final-expiry reminder remains eligible even if feedback is pending or has qualified. Opting out does not change learning access. Invitation learning access continues for a seven-day grace period and while timely feedback for the current term awaits review. When the invitation's expiry and grace have ended and no timely feedback remains pending, invitation access pauses without a charge or deleting your account. Other valid access is unchanged. Reviewing further feedback after the extension does not move the final expiry. Direct invitees can issue two guest codes in total. Guests use the same feedback arrangement and cannot invite further guests. New codes are single-use, unassigned to an email address, and have no redemption deadline. The recipient must use a verified account and explicitly redeem the code on Account. Creating or signing in to an account does not redeem an invitation. Recorded access granted under earlier terms is not automatically converted by this policy.
10. Changes to the Service
We are a small operation and we improve the Service continuously. We may add, change, or remove features, revise or retire questions, change how content is organized, and perform maintenance that takes the Service offline for a while. If we ever decide to discontinue the Service entirely, we will give paying users reasonable notice and, where a paid access period is cut short, a pro-rated refund or account credit for the unused portion.
11. Termination
By you. You can stop using the Service at any time. To delete your account, follow the instructions in the Privacy Policy or email support@ethicsuniverse.com. Deleting your account cannot be undone. It does not remotely erase notes or progress stored in your browsers; clear this site's browser data on each device to remove those local copies.
By us. We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you violate these Terms, if we are required to by law, if your account has been inactive for an extended period, or if we discontinue the Service. Where the reason is something other than your violation of these Terms, and you have paid access that has not run out, we will refund or credit the unused portion.
Afterward. When your access ends, your license to use the content ends too. Sections 4, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 17 continue to apply after termination, along with anything else that by its nature should survive.
12. Disclaimer of warranties
We work hard on accuracy. Even so, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement.
Specifically, we do not warrant that the content is complete, current, or free of errors, that any explanation reflects the position of any examining body or the law of any particular jurisdiction, that the Service will be uninterrupted or secure, or that any defect will be corrected. Medical ethics is a field in which thoughtful people disagree, and standards change. Use your judgment, read the cited sources, and tell us when you think we got something wrong.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.
13. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, OncUniverse LLC, its owners, officers, employees, contractors, authors, and reviewers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, or opportunity, or for any exam result, licensing decision, academic outcome, professional consequence, or clinical outcome, arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if we were advised that such damages were possible.
To the same extent, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim and fifty US dollars.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation of certain liabilities, including liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or gross negligence. Nothing in these Terms limits any liability that cannot be limited under the law that applies to you.
14. Your responsibility to us
If your violation of Section 6, or any other breach of these Terms by you, leads to a claim, loss, or expense for us, including reasonable legal fees, you agree to cover it.
15. Governing law and disputes
These Terms and any dispute arising out of them or the Service are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Before either of us starts a formal proceeding, we agree to try to resolve the dispute informally by email for at least 30 days. If that does not work, disputes will be resolved in the state or federal courts located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and you and we each consent to the jurisdiction of those courts. If you live in a jurisdiction whose consumer laws give you the right to bring claims in your local courts, nothing here takes that right away.
16. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date at the top. If a change is material, we will also let you know by email or with a notice in the Service before it takes effect, and where the law requires it, we will ask for your agreement. Your continued use of the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not agree with a change, stop using the Service and, if you have paid access, contact us about a pro-rated refund or credit for the unused portion.
17. Other terms
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any additional terms we present when you buy something, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service. If a court finds any part unenforceable, the rest stays in effect, and if we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, we can still enforce it later. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else. We may assign ours to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of the business, provided the successor honors these Terms. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account. Notices to us should go to support@ethicsuniverse.com.
18. Contact
Questions about these Terms, your account, billing, or a question you think we got wrong: support@ethicsuniverse.com
OncUniverse LLC (d/b/a EthicsUniverse)
Mailing address: PO Box 203, Camp Hill, PA 17001