Founder showcase
Co-Founder & Co-Chairman
Two of Dr. Gary’s children, Bronson and Sarah Alice, were diagnosed with autism as toddlers. For more than two decades he has put his money, his name and his network behind the questions most people would not ask in public, from Florida’s thimerosal debate to bringing “Vaxxed” to Sarasota.
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Governor Ron DeSantis picked our founder for the state board that licenses and disciplines Florida’s chiropractors. It is the latest in a long line of state appointments for the Sarasota businessman who built 1-800-ASK-GARY.
Long before autism causation reached the White House, it was kept alive by private funders willing to be named. Gary Kompothecras is one of the most consequential of them, a father of children with autism who put his own money and access behind the research and films the establishment tried to bury.
The causation fight and the family-support fight are two halves of the same movement. Alex Kompothecras shows how the next generation is carrying both forward in Sarasota.
The 2025 federal autism actions did not appear from nowhere. Their political origin traces directly to a January 2017 meeting and the network of advocates, Kennedy, Wakefield, and Florida donor Gary Kompothecras, who pressed the case a decade ago.
After the Tribeca Film Festival pulled “Vaxxed” in 2016, Dr. Gary made sure Sarasota could see it anyway. FOX 13 Tampa Bay covered the week-long run, the first time many local families heard the vaccine-autism question discussed on the evening news.
This is Dr. Gary’s own announcement from 2016, ten years before autism causes reached the federal agenda. He and his wife put their family’s story in public to tell Sarasota parents to ask questions before they vaccinate.
January 2026
Appointed to Florida’s Board of Chiropractic Medicine
Gov. Ron DeSantis names Dr. Gary to the state board that licenses Florida’s chiropractors.
June 2016
Brings “Vaxxed” to Sarasota
After Tribeca pulled the film, Dr. Gary arranges a week of screenings at Regal Hollywood Stadium 20.
2016
"Vaxxed" screenings and advocacy reach Trump’s orbit
Andrew Wakefield’s documentary "Vaxxed" is distributed nationally with support from private funders including Florida donor Gary Kompothecras, who helps arrange meetings between Trump and vaccine-safety advocates during the campaign.
2009
Florida thimerosal legislation lobbied
Gary Kompothecras lobbies the Florida legislature for measures to restrict the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in childhood vaccines, an early state-level marker of the causation movement.
Link: www.autismjusticefoundation.org/dr-gary
