What is important?

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
...
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
-- 1 Corinthians 13∞

I find it odd that my sense of what things are important are so very different from many other people's sense of what things are important.
Some things I feel are important, but I doubt I could convince a skeptic.
Here are the things that I think I could convince a skeptic are "objectively" the most important problems in the U.S. (in 2001), in order:

1. Heart Disease 699,597
2. Malignant Neoplasms 553,694
3. Cerebro-vascular 163,426
4. Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease 122,971
5. Unintentional Injury 100,441 (The biggest fraction of this was motor vehicle accidents 42,271 )
6. Diabetes Mellitus 71,369
7. Influenza & Pneumonia 61,730
8. Alzheimer's Disease 53,852
9. Nephritis 39,346
10. Septicemia 31,926
11. Suicide 30,607
12. Liver Disease 27,026
13. Homicide 19,944
14. Hypertension 19,250

These are the 2001 numbers.
In particular, people blow #13 all out of proportion.
I'm not saying that people should do *nothing* about #13.
I'm just saying that it makes no sense to me to spend more money on #13 than on #12.

I hope my ImageTheHeart project will help with #1, even though I've heard that since 2001 it has moved to the #2 position.

Those are sobering numbers....

Should I tell you where I got these numbers?∞