Tough guy special agent Jack Bauer has been accused by a top doctor of "glamorising torture" in cult TV show 24.

Primary care specialist Dr Homer Drae Venters says the popular drama series should tone down the violence because viewers have "become accustomed to the idea of torture".

Suffocating, electrocuting or drugging a suspect are all in a day's work for Bauer, played by Emmy Award winning actor Kiefer Sutherland.

But in an article for medical Journal The Lancet, Dr Venters claims the show's hero Jack Bauer "makes torture popular" and warns that people are increasingly viewing such methods of interrogation as "acceptable".

Dr Venters, of New York City University, said: "Jack Bauer makes torture popular.

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"We are tempted by the glamour and raw charisma that we project onto Jack Bauer, the illusion of protection, and the lure of vigilante justice.

"But the raw truth of torture is that whatever the original motive, the torturer and the tortured are transformed into a perpetrator and a victim of violence."

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