Originally published in the Guardian on 28 January 1971

Successful trials of a contraceptive pill for men have been carried out on rats in a London hospital medical school and, subject to approval, clinical trials may be carried out within a year.

Professor Denis Lacy, of St Bartholomew's Hospital Zoology Department, said yesterday that discussions were being held on whether to apply for permission from the Scowen Committee on Drug Safety to conduct trials on men. No side effects had been observed in the rats which had been given the pill and Professor Lacy did not expect any side effects in man, not even to the extent of those associated with the female oral contraceptive.

Provided the committee was satisfied, Professor Lacy said he would be looking for volunteers, preferably men whose wives had already been sterilised. The pill, he said, would be a mixture of two hormones designed to ensure that while a man was sterile he would not lose his sex urge and virility.

Research into a pill for men is being carried out by a number of drug manufacturers in Britain. The Family Planning Association said it was "excited" by the possibility of another form of contraception for men but particularly it regarded any new form of contraception as welcome. "There is no one method that suits everyone and the more alternatives the better," Mrs Helene Grahame, assistant director of FPA said. She said the vasectomy operation, which was claiming more interest, was still associated by many men with loss of virility. But at FPA clinics there was now a waiting list for the operation of between two months and two years. "The particular attraction of a male pill," Mrs Grahame said, would possibly be its non-permanence.

At present a vasectomy is irreversible and in many cases a man only made the decision to have one because he was unsatisfied or anxious about existing oral contraceptives for his wife. "But men are also becoming more aware they have a joint responsibility on birth control matters," she added. Professor Lacy has been working in the field on contraception for 12 years. His recent work has been aided by the development of a new electron microscope by Polaren Instruments Ltd of Watford, with the support of the National Research Development Corporation.

[Forty years on, and despite numerous scientific research projects, a safe and effective "male pill" is yet to make it to market. The only two methods of contraception still recommended for men are condoms and vasectomy.]

Celebrated architect Richard Rogers and his partners discuss £140m penthouses, John Prescott's ministerial 'flair' and Prince Charles's strange ideas about architecture

Richard Rogers, at 78, is not about to slow down. "I am enjoying myself, so why would I retire?" says the architect of the Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd's of London building. "I'd like to think I'll be learning a new language or something when I die."

But even a master builder can't go on for ever, which is why Richard Rogers Partnership discreetly changed its name, some five years ago, to Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. "We wanted," explains Rogers, "to avoid the situation where the name of the practice is someone who died 100 years ago. Architecture is a living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change – but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years."

Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour are here today too, flanking Rogers protectively like affectionate, respectful and, just occasionally, faintly exasperated sons. (If Rogers is known for running his practice like a family, he is also famous among those who know him for a close and warm family life – one into which tragedy came late last year with the unexpected death of one of his sons, Bo.)

Leeds-raised Stirk, 54, is trim and wiry, with a narrow tie, dark suit and spiky hair; he is softly spoken and emphatic. Harbour, 49, is a rangily tall redhead, brought up in the West Country, with an easy grin and friendly manner. Between them is Rogers, whose get-up – turquoise shirt, orange sweater and splendid, canary-coloured socks – reminds me of Madrid airport's brightly coloured Terminal 4, for which Harbour was lead architect, winning the practice the 2006 Stirling prize.

At the moment Harbour is involved in planning Barangaroo, a former container port in Sydney – the biggest piece of city-making the practice has ever undertaken. Stirk, meanwhile, is working on the new exhibition and conservation centre for the British Museum; he also designed the Knightsbridge residential complex One Hyde Park, infamous for its £140m penthouse, thought to be the most expensive apartment ever put on sale. According to Harbour, their emergence as key figures in the firm is not a revolution. "Between Graham and myself, we have put in 55 years at the practice, so we are not new at it. It's an evolution."

Could a practised eye, I wonder, tell a Stirk from a Harbour building? "I hope not," says Harbour. (Though in fact, one might contend that Stirk buildings – such as the Leadenhall Building in the City of London, and Neo Bankside, a new apartment block next to Tate Modern – tend to be somewhat orthogonal; Harbour's buildings, such as Madrid airport, more expressive and sculptural.) This self-effacing attitude to individual style comes in part from that ethos Rogers mentions. The practice is run on idealistic principles; it has a manifesto that asserts the architects' responsibility towards "contributing to the welfare of mankind, the society in which we practise and the team with whom we work". (It is a moot point, of course, whether the creation of a building containing a £140m penthouse contributes to the welfare of society, a point to which we shall return.) Each Monday morning the staff gather for a discussion of current projects, in which everyone from the highest to the lowest can express views – along the lines of an art-school "group crit" session. There is a profit-share system, and the salaries of the directors cannot rise above a certain proportion of the lowest paid in the firm.

Rogers starts waxing lyrical about the profit-share scheme in answer to a question I put to Harbour about why he has never left the practice, which he joined as an architecture graduate in 1985 "to help out on the Lloyd's building for a couple of months". (Stirk joined in 1983, also cutting his teeth on Lloyd's, which was in December accorded Grade I listed status.) After listening patiently for a little bit, Harbour says: "Actually Richard, that's not the primary reason I am still here. The primary reason I am still here is … every Monday morning it is exciting to come into work because you never quite know what's going to happen, and the debate about architecture and the enthusiasm of the people here is infectious. Richard has been fantastic at encouraging us. I have always felt I can go anywhere within the practice, and I am more excited about tomorrow than yesterday. It's the intellectual environment that I have enjoyed. When I was at college I learned about learning. Here I learned about architecture." He suddenly gets modest. "Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know." He makes it sound a little cultish, as the passion burns in his voice.

Rogers tells me that "architecture is about public space held by buildings"; and civic space, both metaphorical and physical, and the architecture that holds it together, is the subject of a lecture the three are giving at the Royal Institute of British Architects on Tuesday. They gesture toward the public square outside the office, on the banks of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge in London, to illustrate what they mean. (Beside it is the famous restaurant, the River Cafe, run by Rogers' wife, Ruth.) It is privately owned land; but the architects take the view that it adds to the sum of human happiness if they don't lock it off from passersby. And that, in microcosm, is Stirk's argument about One Hyde Park. The important thing, he says, is what they didn't do: "We could have slapped up 12 storeys hard against Knightsbridge, and held the line of the street," he says. Instead, they built a series of pavilion-like structures at right angles to Knightsbridge, allowing passersby to glimpse Hyde Park between the buildings as they wander past.

According to Stirk: "We replaced one big slab building that was impermeable. The notion was to say: this is not a citadel. There are retail areas and garden areas at the base of the building. At least people can sit down on extended pavements; there is an area now where people can congregate and breathe." In short, whatever absurdities prevail upstairs, at street level it is still a better public environment than before.

The idea of the city has preoccupied much of Rogers' life as an architect and, in later years, a politician. He was chairman of the Urban Taskforce from 1998-2005, championing high-density cities; brownfield not greenfield for building. The taskforce was appointed by then deputy prime minister John Prescott, about whom Rogers has nothing but good to say. "Contrary to what everyone believed, I thought Prescott was a good minister, because he concentrated, and stuck around, and had a certain flair. It was a very important part of my life." The question of "how one builds at the density required of a city centre, and still achieves the right feel at the street scale", as Harbour puts it, is of urgent concern, they argue. "It's about humane scale in intensified development," adds Stirk. "It's about concentrating, rather than spreading," says Harbour. "You need good design to solve the problems of dense spaces."

Which is why Rogers has been speaking in the Lords about the government's draft National Planning Policy Framework. He agrees that the planning laws are due for rationalisation. But he fears the proposed reforms will loosen planning regulations too much: we could end up "like the south of France or the southern coast of Spain, with the whole south-east peppered with buildings". He agrees with the National Trust's campaign against the reforms, but from the other end of the argument – their potential effect on cities and towns, rather than just on the countryside. Cities that sprawl lose energy, he says. It's not so long ago, he warns, that post-industrial city centres, such as Manchester's, were bleak places, more or less uninhabited. Drawing residents back to the heart of cities has made them more attractive, safer, livelier. Intelligent density is the answer, with old and new buildings cohabiting gracefully, argue the architects. "Cities are about juxtaposition," says Rogers. "In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like." Harbour adds: "In Bordeaux we built law courts right next door to what is effectively a listed historic building, and that makes it exciting. Can you imagine that in London?" There is some hope that the government will change its position – the MPs of the communities and local government committee have urged ministers, in a report published before Christmas, to drop the notion of the default "yes" to development. But the battle is not yet won, and Rogers will continue to campaign from the Lords.

The question of juxtaposition, of course, is one that has bedevilled modernist British architects in the past, particularly in relation to Prince Charles's views on architecture. In 1987, the prince spoke out against Rogers' plans for Paternoster Square near St Paul's Cathedral in a speech at Mansion House. ("You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.") In 2009, he attacked them again: this time, by warning the Qatari royal family off Stirk's plans for the former Chelsea Barracks in London. The practice was sacked by the Qataris at an hour's notice, and years of work went to waste.

Rogers says: "For a long time we thought we were going to be all right, because Prince Charles had other things to think about, like Princess Diana dying. But he has some strange ideas on medicine, some strange ideas on farming and some very strange ideas on architecture. He believes architecture is something that doesn't change. And the problem is he doesn't discuss things, he makes statements." Harbour adds: "He does believe architecture can make the world a better place, so in the abstract, we have a lot in common. But if you are not prepared to debate your position..."

Rogers continues: "He loves Christopher Wren! But Wren was hated during his life because he was too modern." Harbour expands: "The irony is that his 'monstrous carbuncle' speech was made in Wren's extension to Hampton Court, which was a modern monstrosity compared to the original building." Harbour once visited the prince's pet architecture project, Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorset, "when I was on holiday nearby". He didn't much like it.

His career, says Rogers, has never been easy. "It's been a bloody lot of work to get here. After the Pompidou Centre, my partner was threatening to become a taxi driver. We went through some pretty difficult times. I thought I was going to have to give up architecture at least three times, not because I wanted to leave architecture, but because it seemed to want to leave me." Despite the Prince of Wales's best efforts, though, Rogers has kept at it. And, says Harbour: "He has many years to go." He adds: "I am still younger than Richard was when I joined the practice." I ask why it matters; is it that he will feel truly grown up when he reaches that age? "A deadly concept, growing up," pitches in Rogers. Harbour adds: "What is work? It's part of your life. The idea of stopping work, if you are fortunate enough to love it, is something I don't understand – and I know Richard doesn't."

Rogers, Stirk and Harbour's lecture on Cities and the Language of Architecture is at the RIBA, London W1, on 31 January

A shortage of donor organs means people may not get a transplant when they need one. That's where families are stepping in – often the best match is a sibling, parent or even a child. Joanna Moorhead talks to living donors and the loved ones they have saved

The shortage of organs for transplant from dead donors means that more and more live donor transplants take place – often a parent gives an organ to a child, a sibling to a sibling and, sometimes, a child to a parent.

Father to daughter

"There isn't a parent alive who wouldn't do what I've done," says 52-year-old Barry Nicholson cheerfully. "Katherine was 13, and desperately ill. She'd been born with biliary atresia, which is a serious liver disease. And she'd already had a transplant in 1998 when she was two. We thought it was all behind us because for years she was fine. Then she started getting poorly and they told us the liver was failing."

The whole family – Barry, a driver, his wife, Carol, 47, a police officer, and their son Sam, 19, were devastated to be told that Katherine had to go back on the transplant register, especially because as the months went by, Katherine became increasingly ill. But no liver was forthcoming. "I wasn't aware you could be a living liver donor," says Barry. "Then Katherine's doctor told me that it's possible to give part of your liver, which regenerates. He said, 'Would you do it?' I said, 'That's a bit of a no-brainer, really.'"

Barry turned out to be a perfect match for Katherine. King's College Hospital, in London, which has one of the country's leading liver transplant units, agreed to do the operations. "First we had to get there from Newcastle," says Carol. "The car journey down was probably the most dramatic of our lives. Barry drove, and I was in the back with Katherine, who was in a very bad way. When we finally arrived at King's, they couldn't believe we had travelled all that way by car with her in that state – but we knew that this was her only chance."

Although she was so poorly, Katherine remembers the drive. "We were all very quiet: we all knew we were facing something really big," she says. "It was make or break – we all knew that."

She was worrying about her father. "I kept hoping a liver would become available from a dead donor, right up to the last minute," she says. "It felt so scary. I was used to me being ill, but this meant Dad would be ill as well. I wasn't sure I'd be able to cope with that."

Before the transplant could take place, there were some anxious days while hospital staff worked to stabilise Katherine's condition, but finally, in May 2009, it went ahead. "Barry's operation was very early in the morning," says Carol. "I was trying to keep their spirits up, telling Barry that Katherine was doing fine as he was being taken to theatre, and reassuring Katherine back on her ward because she was so worried about Barry."

It was the longest day of Carol's life. Katherine wasn't out of surgery until after midnight and then spent several days unconscious.

Barry says the hardest thing was being a healthy person in a hospital ward. "But I recovered quickly. The doctors took 40% of my liver for Katherine, and it regenerated within 18 weeks – it's a very clever organ."

When Katherine eventually came round, her first thought was for her father. "I was so relieved when Mum said he was fine." Father and daughter were reunited a few days later. "Seeing him for the first time after the operation was amazing," says Katherine. "It wasn't just that he'd done this big thing for me – it was also that I'd missed him so much. Every time I'd been ill before he'd always been there at my bedside. Now, suddenly, he couldn't be."

Three weeks later, they drove back to Newcastle. "It was a sunny day, and it felt like the first day of the rest of our lives," says Barry. Today, Barry's liver is serving Katherine well, and she's a normal teenager again. "Like every young person of my age, there are times when I argue with my parents. But it never lasts long. What Dad did for me means too much to put into words. 'Thank you' just isn't enough."

Brother to brother

On a sunny, summer's afternoon last year, Leanne George watched her 16-month-old youngest son Gethyn running around the garden, never imagining it would be the last "normal" day her family would ever know. "He was playing so happily. Then I brought him in to change his nappy and that's when I saw the rash," she says.

It was red and blotchy, stretching down his legs. "My first thought was meningitis," says Leanne. "My husband Andrew and I rushed him to hospital, and the doctors there said the same."

The bombshell came three hours later: leukaemia. "We'd been out of our minds with worry, but we hadn't even considered cancer," says Leanne.

The news, already very bad, got worse. Gethyn had acute lymphatic leukaemia, which doctors would usually treat with chemotherapy. But the little boy tested positive for a rare chromosome, which meant drugs were less likely to work. "The doctor said Gethyn's best chance was a bone-marrow transplant and that the marrow could only come from one of his two brothers," says Leanne. Her other sons are Evan, now seven, and Garyn, now four: and right from the start, says Leanne, she thought Garyn was the more likely match. "Garyn and Gethyn are so alike that people sometimes think they're twins," she says. After a desperately anxious fortnight, Leanne's hunch was confirmed. "My first thought was gratitude, because of Gethyn," she says. "But a second later, I was worrying for Garyn. He's a small boy for his age – and now he was going to have to go through an operation, to save his brother."

Staff at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, where the transplant was to be carried out, encouraged Leanne and Andrew to make Garyn as aware as possible of what was happening. "We felt he was too young to understand, but they said it was important to try to explain it," she says. "So we sat Garyn and Evan down and told them Gethyn had some bad bugs in his blood, and that was why he was in hospital. We said Evan and Garyn both had magic cells in their blood that could help Gethyn, but that Evan's were too big – and Garyn's were the right size."

The day of the transplant was "the best and the worst day of my life," says Leanne, 32. "Worst because of the enormity of what my children were going through, and best because it gave our family its chance of a future."

Garyn's operation was in the morning: Leanne held his hand as he was put under a general anaesthetic and then hurried back to Gethyn's cot. A couple of hours later, Garyn was back on his ward; Leanne remembers racing past Andrew on the stairs as they swapped places between one child and the other. "Looking back, I don't know how we got through it," she says.

Gethyn's transplant was the afternoon of Garyn's operation. "It was a simple process – like a blood transfusion," says Leanne.

Both boys recovered well – Garyn was back to normal quickly, while for Gethyn, now three, the transformation was astonishing. Marrow is given while the patient is awake and, recalls Leanne, "Even before the transplant was finished he was up on his feet, rattling the bars of his cot. It was as though he'd drunk a whole can of Red Bull!"

She is cautious about the future, though. Never again, she says, will she feel as secure as she did on that sunny August afternoon. "We just hope we've been incredibly lucky," she says. "One day, when the boys are older, we'll tell them again what Garyn did for Gethyn – and they'll understand it properly. But for now, my biggest joy is seeing my boys enjoying their childhood. That's not something I can ever take for granted any more."

Son to mother

As she was being prepped for her general anaesthetic, Kate Shipton was sobbing so much that she thought the doctor wouldn't be able to get the needle into her arm. "I thought, they won't be able to put me to sleep in this state," she says. "It was all so terrible, so wrong. I couldn't believe it had come to this."

Kate, now 60, was about to be given her son Matt's kidney. Two years earlier, she had developed an auto-immune disease out of the blue and her kidneys had failed as a result. "I'd been very ill indeed – I remember lying in hospital and being able to tell from the nurses' faces how bad it was," she says. At first, survival seemed enough – but then, when she was discharged after three months in hospital, she began to realise how much kidney dialysis was going to change her life.

"I had to go back to hospital three times a week. Dialysis doesn't make you better, but it keeps you alive. You have to juggle everything around it – and you have to restrict your fluid intake, and be very careful about what you eat and drink as well."

Doctors told Kate, a parish clerk who lives near Guildford, Surrey, that her only hope of normal life would be a transplant – but 18 months on, the waiting list brought no opportunity of getting one. "I felt that, as an older person, my chances weren't high," she says.

Then someone mentioned the possibility of a living donor. "My first thought was, no – I didn't want anyone to go through that for me," Kate remembers. "But various people came forward, including my elderly mother, and my partner, Guy. That was very humbling. And it's all immensely emotional, realising that there are people who would do something like this for you."

None of the volunteers was suitable. "Then Matt, who is my only child, asked if he could be tested," says Kate. "I thought no, not that, not ever. It goes against every grain of your being, that your child would put himself at risk for your life – it felt utterly wrong."

For 33-year-old Matt, who works in IT, it was less complicated. "I've got friends who have lost parents – they can understand why I did this," he says. "I knew my mum wasn't happy about it, and it was always stressed to me that I had a choice. But I said to Mum, 'It's really not that bad.' I knew I could expect a normal life afterwards, What's more, Mum could too. "

The transplant was in September 2010. The night before, Kate lay in her hospital bed while Matt went to the pub for a drink. "The worst part about it was having to get to the hospital by 7am," he jokes. "They took me down to the theatre first. I remember waking up in the recovery room a few hours later and my mum was being wheeled in beside me."

"He gave me a big thumbs-up," remembers Kate.

Within a few days, both went home to convalesce. "I don't miss my kidney at all – but it has transformed Mum's life," says Matt.

"The change for me is unbelievable," says Kate. "Matt knows he gave me my life back. I have to stop myself from saying thank you the whole time. But he knows, even when I'm not saying it, that's what I'm thinking."

• The British Kidney Patient Association, which supported Kate through her illness, is at britishkidney-pa.co.uk

Unexpected visitors on a messy, child-free day

It's Wednesday afternoon on a week without children and I'm working at the kitchen table. In front of me are three mugs of tea in various stages of neglect, an empty yoghurt pot, some tangerine peel and, mystifyingly, a single sock. There are several teetering piles of papers, a toolbox, a jar of face cream and the dog's lead. Through the window, I can see the Christmas tree leaning against the wall, shedding eight billion needles a day. It's dark and dreich and only one of the kitchen lights is working. I am writing about electric cars. The whole scene is less than aspirational.

I haven't got dressed yet either – I have skulked round the block with the dog, my tracksuit bottoms trailing in the puddles, and as I'm staying in this evening, it is perfectly possible that I won't get dressed at all. Or eat a proper meal. By myself, I subsist quite happily on supermarket puddings and toast.

My solo weeks aren't always like this. I do go out, see friends and wear clothes without elasticated waists. Sometimes I even vacuum. Even so, the combination of working from home and suddenly, in my mid-30s, getting huge swathes of time alone with no experience of how to structure it, has turned me semi-feral. Sundays see me spring guiltily into action, cleaning the bath and buying food before the boys return.

As I am trying to think of yet another synonym for "economical", the doorbell rings. The dog wakes with a start and scrambles dutifully to its feet to go and stand three feet from the front door barking hysterically.

I follow, nervously. Jehovah's Witnesses or, worse, my landlady? An impromptu visit from her with the house in this state is a horrifying thought: she has a black belt in disapproval. Thankfully, it's neither: when I open the door, my eldest son is standing there, looking very pleased with himself, his cheeks pink with cold. I feel a sharp jolt of love.

"Hi, Mum!" He starts making a fuss of the dog, who is ecstatic to see him.

Hovering awkwardly behind him is Anna, X's German au pair. We've only met once, but she seems nice, if quite formal. She even persuaded the boys to construct a homemade advent calendar for me before Christmas. X, I know, isn't sure she's tough enough. He makes ambivalent faces when I ask how she's settled in.

"Darling! What a lovely surprise." I give him a kiss, which he submits to, grudgingly. "Hi, Anna."

"I'm sorry about this," says Anna, nervously. "I hope we aren't disturbing you. He insisted, because we were just round the corner, on coming to pick up some cartoon book he needs."

"It's fine! It's a treat. Come in!"

The eldest zooms off upstairs and I usher Anna in. Of course, as soon as I do, the house looks instantly, grotesquely worse: my grubby hoodie, the nests of dust that gather in the corners of the staircase, the army of dirty cups in the sink. Anna is very neat, her navy jacket buttoned, scarf knotted, hair in a tight ponytail. I feel like a grubby child.

"So," I say, to cover my awkwardness. "How is it going with the boys?"

"It's fine. They're great," she says, sounding unconvinced. I feel a pang of anxiety, but then I remember what it feels like to be 19 and living in some stranger's house. I wouldn't have been overly enthusiastic either.

"They really enjoyed the treasure hunt you did for them. They keep asking me to do one now."

Her face lights up. "Really? I can never tell if they like things. Whenever I suggest anything, they say they'd rather just watch TV."

"Ha, that sounds about right. Well, it made a big impression, honestly."

The eldest saunters in casually, his arms full of toys and comics. "I'm hungry, Mum."

"Oh. I haven't got much …" I cast around anxiously for acceptable snacks. I haven't shopped. For a second I feel like a childless person might, trying and failing to meet the unexpected demands of a small visitor – do they like oatcakes? Ryvita? Grapefruit juice? "Check the cupboard?"

"We'd better go, anyway," says Anna, looking at her watch.

He unearths a biscuit, and holds it between his teeth as he shrugs his coat back on. "Bye, Mum." This time he gives me a hug. I squeeze him back hard, and kiss his velvety cheek.

And off they go, my son and the girl who is looking after him. It takes me hours to get my concentration back.

I'm 50 and would love to travel, but will I regret this when I'm old and having to live frugally?

Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it's up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday's paper.

This week's question

I'm 50 and rather than pushing large sums into my pension plan I'm tempted to enjoy the money now. I love to walk and travel. Do I spend it now while healthy, living more frugally later? Or the other way round? Do you really need that much money when older? What's your experience?