However, after becoming President, Mbeki changed tack and represented the views of a small minority of eminent scientists who claimed that AIDS was not caused by HIV. These included Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis, the U.S.A National Academy of Sciences member Peter Duesberg as well as others with varying degrees of prominence. Mbeki found their views compelling, although the overwhelming majority of scientists disagree with them. On 9 July 2000, at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, President Mbeki made a speech that attracted much criticism in that he avoided references to HIV and instead focused mainly on poverty as a powerful co-factor in AIDS diagnosis. His administration was repeatedly accused of failing to respond adequately to the AIDS epidemic, and including failing to authorise and implement an overall national treatment program for AIDS that included anti-retroviral medicines, and in particular an antiretroviral programme to prevent HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to babies while in the womb.