According to Wikipedia[1], he died in 1999 at the age of 48, which is so young that I also would like to know what happened. He was apparently healthy and working and just fine a week before his death. But there's a bizarre resistance among some people regarding discussing cause of death. If a President suddenly died, we shouldn't ask about cause of death "out of respect"? I'm a big believer in privacy, but it's silly to not talk about cause of death after someone has passed away. In fact, we should know causes in order to improve all our lives (to be more cautious of heart disease, or suicide, or motorcycle accidents, etc.).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens

Sometimes though (and I'm not saying it was in this case) the cause of death is perceived as stigmatising, and so is withheld to protect the person's name, or protect the family.

This happened, for example, with Isaac Asimov who died in 1992. He contracted Aids from a blood transfusion [1]. In the 80s and 90s this was sufficiently stigmatising to warrent being kept quiet.

Today things like drug overdosing and suicide are sometimes considered shameful,and details are suppressed. Or worse; imagine having to answer that your relative was shot by police while shooting kids in an elementary school...

In truth people die of embarrassing things all the time, so in some societies it is impolite to ask.

Again, to be clear I am NOT suggesting that there was anything shameful about this death, I'm making a more general point about the nature of reporting cause of death.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

Thank you for the post, and I'd like to highlight that the only important driver here is Shame.

We all experience it (some much much much more than others), and yet we never discuss it, by its very nature. It can be debilitating and will naturally lead oneself to dark places.

Shame kills.