"Vilain would write in a 2007 article for Nature Genetics titled “We Used to Call Them Hermaphrodites,” that terms such as “intersex” and “hermaphrodite” should be abandoned, due to their connotations.Vilain is currently one of the principal investigators of the Differences/Disorders of Sex Development Translational Research Network (DSD-TRN), a large research network of 10 different medical sites.