Fatal Goof Jolts Famous Cancer Institute : Medicine: Death of Boston health columnist is the latest in series of hospital mishaps. Betsy Lehman’s heart failed after she was given four times the maximum safe dosage of a highly toxic drug.

When an award-winning health columnist for one of the biggest newspapers in the country got breast cancer, she went to one of the best hospitals in the world.

The Boston Globe’s Betsy Lehman, of all people, wound up dead because of a huge mistake at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, of all places.

“If this can happen at a place like Dana-Farber . . . what is happening in other places?” asked Dr. O. Michael Colvin, incoming director of the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The fatal mistake, disclosed by the Globe last month, was the latest in a series of blatant medical errors that have hurt the reputation of some of America’s best hospitals and alarmed patients.

Lehman’s heart failed after she was given four times the maximum safe dosage of a highly toxic drug during chemotherapy. She was nearing the end of three months of treatment.

At least a dozen doctors, nurses and pharmacists overlooked the error for four days while Lehman continued to receive an overdose of cyclophosphamide, and a fourfold overdose of another drug meant to shield her from side effects.

“She was dealing with horrendous symptoms,” Lehman’s husband, Robert Distel, a scientist at Dana-Farber, told the Globe. “I guess it was called mucositis. The whole lining of her gut from one end to the other was shedding. She was vomiting sheets of tissue. They said this was the worst they’d ever seen. But the doctors said this was all normal.”

Lehman, a 39-year-old mother of two, died Dec. 3. An autopsy found no visible signs of cancer in her body, indicating that the treatment had worked, the Globe reported.

The mistake wasn’t discovered until Feb. 13, after clerks went through records.

Just two days before Lehman’s death, a 52-year-old woman was a victim of the same mistake. She was rushed into intensive care with serious heart damage and remains hospitalized.

The cancer research and treatment center said human error is the only explanation.

“We accept absolutely full responsibility for these tragedies,” Dana-Farber physician-in-chief Dr. David M. Livingston said. “Every doctor here is humbled by this. Every doctor feels the sense and the gravity of these tragedies.”

The 48-year-old hospital, which treats 9,000 people a year, is negotiating a settlement with Lehman’s family.

Lehman joined the Globe in 1982 and began her “Health Sense” column in 1986. She wrote about new treatments and other scientific developments, doctors’ attitudes toward patients and patients’ fears of hospitals.

She wrote about breast cancer, but not her own illness.

In a letter she wrote to a colleague in May, Lehman complained that a doctor at Dana-Farber was “cold and rotten” to her, the Globe said.

Two doctors involved in Lehman’s case have been assigned to desk jobs until two investigations are completed.

Three pharmacists were suspended briefly and have been banned from dispensing the kind of drugs used in the Lehman case. A computer has been installed to prevent the administration of high doses without review by an expert doctor, nurse and pharmacist.

“Maybe everybody (on the medical team) was assuming that someone else had everything under control,” said Sharon Batt, author of “Patient No More” and a former cancer patient who was treated with cyclophosphamide.

About 40,000 people each year come to Massachusetts to be treated in its hospitals, according to the Massachusetts Hospital Assn.

Lehman was a three-time winner of the top journalism award from the Massachusetts chapter of the American Cancer Society, which will present her posthumously with its first-ever lifetime achievement award on Wednesday.