How do advancements in science and technology help in improving one's health and in preventing disease?

This could actually be a controversial topic to discuss.

In some respects, technological, and likewise medical advancements may be able to "cure" diseases and relieve symptoms, but it also has the potential to spell the imminent doom for the human race.

Advancements in antibiotics, and viral treatment will be able to rid a person of infections, but every time we develop a new product, the pathogens evolve and eventually become immune to our "poisons". This is why new antibiotics are continuously being developed, to treat "resistant" strains of disease. This is based on Darwin theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. The pathogens that survive our new antibiotics are the ones that go on to reproduce, and eventually become the primary infectious pathogen.

The inverse principle applies to genetic diseases such as Huntington's corea, or cardiac "channelopathies". As we find new ways to lessen the symptoms of these diseases, the mortality rate for these patients will be reduced allowing them to live more normal, happy, health lives.

How is this bad???

If these genetically ill people have children, there is a very good chance that those children will also have the disease. Follow this pattern for 3 or 4 generations, and there's 100 people who have the disease. As this continues, the prevalence of the disease in the population will also increase, until the whole population is affected.

This might seem far fetched as the human population is so large and reaches every corner of the planet, but think of how quickly H1N1 2009 spread from Mexico to Europe and Asia. People travel easily and quite frequently in modern society, allowing for a variety of different partners in a variety of different countries, and likewise leaving their illness in all corners of the world.