David Sloane listened to his mother when she told him to get up off the couch, get a job, and not major just in philosophy and mathematics.
So he went to Harvard Medical School, completed residency in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and then completed a fellowship in allergy and immunology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. For some reason they allowed him to stay there, first as an NIH funded researcher into the cellular and molecular mechanisms of allergic diseases, and thereafter as an attending, where he sees patients with allergic diseases, adult immunodeficiencies, and a number of psychiatric conditions. He also attends on the rapid drug desensitization service at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and cares for allergy and immunology patients at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center where he is the medical director.
When he is not doing this clinical work, he teaches, develops curriculum, and immerses himself in educational research at Harvard Medical School. Thinking that he ought to develop some expertise in learning and teaching, he earned a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
When he is not doing those educational things, he spends his time with his wife and five children in Sharon, Massachusetts. When they are all asleep and he has a moment of quiet, he goes back to his couch and dreams of having a life devoted to philosophy and mathematics. He calls his mother frequently to tell her this.