NBC's Tim Russert dies

I think just telling people he died of a heart attack would suffice. I don't think there is much need for the public at large to know what caused that heart attack, certainly not in such crude terms so soon after the man died.

I wouldn't say it is 'crude'. It's just biology - many people know about good/bad cholesterol and arterial plaques. How is it any different from saying someone died from a malignant form of cancer? If anything, it's a lesson for us all...

People are curious about many things, doesn't mean that they've got the right to know.

I don't know what the hypocratic position is in the US, but I doubt a doctor here would be able to come out and give so much detail

People are more detailed with cancer and diseases, why not heart conditions? People with brain tumours don't die of "headache."

The morbid and inappropriate description given by that doctor removed any kind of sentimentality and respect from the death of a professional.

I think you guys are over-reacting. I studied A-Level Biology and those phrases were commonplace. I certainly wouldn't call them 'crude' or 'morbid'. Most of the general public are aware of thrombosis, plaques, arteries, cancer, tumour etc. We're not living in the 1800s for goodness sake!