ROBERT GORTER, MD, PhD

Dr. Gorter earned his medical degree at the University of Amsterdam Medical School in the Netherlands, where he graduated as a family practitioner in 1973.  He completed his second postdoctoral training at the University of California – San Francisco (UCSF) Medical School in 1986.

Dr. Gorter served as a full UCSF faculty member from 1986 to 2008. Additional education includes a doctorate from the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany in 1993, where he continues to serve as a faculty member. His training is foremost in conventional Western medicine with postdoctoral work in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands.

He also completed specialty training in anthroposophical medicine in 1973 in Arlesheim, Switzerland, with an emphasis on oncology. Dr. Robert Gorter has written numerous articles and abstracts, contributed to many books, and been featured on ABC, CNN and numerous television programs in the EU and the Middle East.

In the 1980’s, Dr. Gorter served as a physician and researcher on AIDS at San Francisco general Hospital in the world-renowned Ward 86. He continued his involvement in research within the emerging field of immune therapy when Ward 86 became part of the UCSF AIDS Program. Subsequently, for four years, Dr. Gorter was the medical director of the Department of AIDS Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF.

He was also highly active in program development in the initiation of the AIDS Health Project, the Coming Home hospice movement, and the Visiting Nurses’ Association home care services hor HIV/AIDS and cancer patients . This work, conducted at the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States and Europe, provided Dr. Gorter the opportunity to be involved in the research and clinical care that first defined the complex elements of the human immune system. These studies from UCSF Medical Center have resulted in the most extensive knowledge base on immunity in HIV infection in our time. When Dr. Gorter moved the focus of his work to cancer treatment a decade later, he integrated what he had learned in clinical practice and program development. He applied clinically relevant research on immune therapy to develop nontoxic, immune-based therapies for the treatment of cancer.

Drawing on what he learned as an AIDS researcher and on his clinical experiences, he began developing a cancer treatment program based on the principles of intensive and targeted immune restoration. He has also participated in research on botanicals that address cancer, as well as other forms of immune suppression. In Berlin he founded the European Institute for Oncological and Immunological research, which he directed until 2001.

This Institute was affiliated with the Free University (Freie Universität) and Dr. Gorter was also asked to lecture regularly to medical students and young doctors in this field. Dr. Gorter has spent more than two decades establishing and refining effective methodology for immune therapy. He has pioneered the integrated use of therapeutic fever (fever-range, total-body hyperthermia) and has also worked extensively with an approach that essentially vaccinates the immune system to restore latent immune function.

Dr. Gorter opened his private practice and health care center in the hearth of Amsterdam in 1974. Only a few weeks after opening his practice, he was diagnosed with far-advanced, Stage IV testicular cancer – at that time described as “teratocarcinoma”, which is a type of cancer curently defined as germ-cell carcinoma.

He was able to recover successfully through nontoxic treatment – that is, without the use of chemotherapy or radiation. His treatment consisted solely of therapeutic fever (hyperthermia) and injections of a known oncological botanical, the European mistletoe. This experience motivated him to further explore new, nontoxic approaches to cancer therapy.

At that time, the dendritic cells were not known, therefore we couldn’t use them therapeutically, but I did hyperthermia and I injected myself as a doctor with Viscum album (Mistletoe). I decided not to reveal my end-stage cancer diagnosis.Instead of focusing on the disease, I put all my energy into building a professional career. It took me about one year to achieve complete remission. 

 As a practicing physician, knowing that chemotherapy and radiation would inflict massive toxic side effects without much hope of a prolonged life expectancy, I decided to decline these options and go for a nontoxic cancer therapy. It has now been more than three decades ago since I was given that end-stage cancer diagnosis and I continue to live all these years to the fullest, without any signs or symptoms of cancer.     Of course, hope is extremely important as well. I really believe this is also the basis of the Gorter Model, that we try to the best we can to give patients a realistic hope and faith in what they do and we try to give them as far as we can, also care or love.