Vice Fashion - It's Rocket Science And Brain Surgery!

PHOTOS: Ben Cook
STYLING: Aldene Johnson
INTERVIEWS: Chris Wilkinson

Simon wears jumper by Fila

SIMON, 41

Consultant Neurosurgeon at the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust, Oxford

Vice: Why did you decide to become a brain surgeon?

Simon:

Well I was quite scientific at school and a number of people who end up doing medical degrees seem to like science. I think it’s very rare nowadays to find people who have some sort of moral obligation to want to cure people. It just seemed to be the pinnacle of technical achievement you could reach in medicine in terms of how science and ethics and engineering and technical advances are bound together.

What’s the hardest part of your job?

You’ve got to make some pretty difficult decisions sometimes. Some decisions are going to affect people the rest of their lives, so it can be difficult, particularly when you are talking to a family or a patient about a treatment that is potentially life saving, but equally, could result in fairly significant complications, or even their death.

And what’s the best part?

It sounds rather glib and clichéd but it’s nice to know that you do make a difference. One thing that does make your job worthwhile is when you treat someone who is either not going to survive or is going to have a very poor quality of life and you completely turn it around for them.

What’s the longest you’ve ever spent in theatre?

Operation-wise, the longest I’ve done is about 14 or 15 hours.

Simon wears shirt by Energie, jumper by Fenchurch and cap by One True Saxon

What do you do to relax?

I like racing cars, I’ve got a Caterham 7. I used to have a Lotus but I’ve just changed it to the Caterham and I’m going to start doing some competitions in that in the near future. I still go and see bands and I listen to a lot of electronic music as well.

Have you ever heard the song “Crash Course In Brain Surgery” by Budgie?

No.

Metallica covered it on the “Garage Days Revisited EP” as a way of breaking in Jason Newsted after the death of Cliff Burton.

Maybe I’ll check it out.

Daniel wears shirt by Boxfresh, tank by Wrangler, jeans by Firetrap and shoes by PF Flyers

DANIEL, 25

PhD Student in Physics and Cryogenic Instrumentation at the Space Research Centre, University of Leicester

Vice: You’re a rocket scientist, can you explain what you actually do?

Daniel:

I’m mostly working on something called super-conducting tunnel junction at the moment, which is a new kind of photon counting detector. It can detect single particles of light like X-rays, ultraviolet light, optical light, and gamma rays and tell you exactly how much energy they have.

What got you interested in space and astronomy?

I’ve always been interested in space and then I started doing physics at school and got interested in that. Doing a degree in physics and space technology was the next logical step. That was my undergraduate degree.

Do you believe in life on other planets?

I’m almost certain that life on other planets has to exist. I can see no reason why, if it exists on Earth, it shouldn’t exist anywhere else.

What about intelligent life?

That’s a much more difficult question because of course it’s much more improbable.

Personally, I would imagine that the probability is pretty good that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe, but it is almost certain that we will never, ever get to meet any of them because the distances are so large.

Daniel wears T-shirt by Boxfresh, tae kwan do jacket and trousers model’s own and shoes by Kickers

What do you do in your spare time?

I really like sports generally, but it’s mostly fencing and tae kwon do these days. I’ve won a couple of local tournaments but nothing major.

How do people react when you tell them what you do?

I usually get one of two reactions. Either people say leave me alone with that or they get really interested because space is pretty exciting.

Who would win in a University Challenge style quiz, brain surgeons or rocket scientists?

I don’t think there’s necessarily a correlation between the subject and how good you are at pub quiz questions, but considering that we’ve got a guy here who used to win faculty pub quizzes by himself when everyone else was in teams, as long as we get him there’s no way we could possibly lose.

Sanj wears cardigan by French Connection and shoes by Swear

SANJ, 38

Consultant Neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital, London

Vice: You’re a brain surgeon. Can you explain what is it that you actually do?

Sanj:

What we actually do varies. It goes from brain tumours, head injuries and blood clots to spinal injuries. My big interest is children’s brain tumours. I probably take out about 50 or 60 brain tumours a year. The youngest person I’ve operated on was 18 weeks premature, the oldest was 102.

What’s it like the first time you perform brain surgery and actually cut open someone’s skull?

I have to admit when I first started I used to feel queasy. At first, I didn’t like the sight of blood. After a while you get used to it, it becomes a routine, but the first time is scary.

What’s the best part of your job?

The thing would be the kids. You operate on these kids who are really sick. They have a big brain tumour, on death’s door, and you operate and two days later they’re up and running around.

And the worst part?

There’s a very sad side to it as well, because I know that most children I operate on will die in two to five years. Dealing with a five-year-old child who’s asking you, “Am I going to die?” is tough. Even at five, children have a fine inkling of their own mortality.

Sanj wears shirt by Paul Smith, jumper by French Connection, trousers and shoes by Zara

What do you do to take your mind off what’s obviously a high-pressured, emotional job?

I do like to have a few drinks, as long as I’m not operating the next day and I’ll get fairly hungover by the next morning. I went to medical school in Manchester and my time was spent between medical school and the Haçienda. I’ve got kids, three boys, and their religion is PlayStation, so I’m pretty good on the old PlayStation as well. My favourite game is

Grand Theft Auto

.

There’s a well-known phrase, “It’s not exactly brain surgery”, that people use when someone is making hard work of something easy. What’s it like when people say it to you?

The way I see brain surgery is that it is like any other job. If you’re a mechanic or a plumber or a general surgeon, you learn the trade. I feel privileged and lucky to do what I do, and I think with the quote, well I use “It’s not rocket science”.

James wears shirt by French Connection, jeans by One True Saxon and shoes by K-Swiss

JAMES, 27

Instrument Scientist at the Space Research Centre, University of Leicester

Vice: What do you do?

James:

I’m an instrument scientist for the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer on BepiColombo, which is a joint European Space Agency and Japanese Space Agency mission to Mercury. The bit that we are working on, the X-ray Spectrometer, looks at X-rays that come from the surface of the planet, and these tell you what it’s made of.

What got you interested in space and space exploration?

I remember being very, very young and just loving space and everything to do with space, I was just really into it. For my second birthday I had a rocket birthday cake. When I was at school I didn’t really think about it, then I was looking for degree subjects and I saw Leicester, Physics with Space Science and Technology. I applied for it and I came. It’s been great.

James wears top by Altura, shorts by Nike, shoes by Shimano and bag by Eastpak

You work at the Space Research Centre. Does anything exciting happen there or is it just work?

We get the occasional nutter who wants to know where the UFOs are kept. A guy turned up in the director’s office once demanding to know where we kept the alien artefacts and stuff, so he gave him a tour of the building and he went away quite bored.

Have you made any discoveries?

I accidentally discovered a new dust particle in space around the Earth. We were flying an experiment for a completely different reason and we got it back and analysed it and found this whole new population of dust particles around the Earth.

There’s a well-known phrase, “It’s not exactly rocket science”, that people use when someone is making hard work of something easy. I mean, is rocket science that hard?

The rocket scientist badge is really entertaining for about a month and then it gets pretty old. Now when people ask me what I do I just say I’m a scientist or I work at the university. If they push me I’ll say space science, because it’s a bit of a conversation stopper. The novelty value wears off pretty quick.