As a point of clarity, only rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder.  Osteoarthritis,  what most of us experience with aging, is mechanical breakdown, accompanied by inflammation.  I forgot to include the link to the clinical journal article I cited previously which reviewed the extant literature for "bee venom acupuncture".  Here it is:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1062163/

The article also references positive outcomes in animal studies (don't know if the Walter Reed dog study you mention was included) but you have to wonder what the "success" criteria were, since efficacy in arthritis relief largely = pain relief, ie, highly subjective, and  "dog patients" can't report.  If you read the literature on meta-analyses of studies on the effectiveness of acupuncture, you realize that results are still highly suggestive of placebo: ie, they can't identify a physical mechanism of action, account for dosing variance, or the limited conditions it helps. Which isn't to say acupuncture isn't effective; you just have to realize what you're looking at, ie, all the variables in play.

There's a fascinating illustration of the power of placebo recounted in Andrew Weil's book "Spontaneous Healing": a patient dying in hospital, his body riddled with tumors, whose physician was resisting his pleas to try a new experimental chemo drug he'd read about in the news. The doctor could not enroll him because the patient was such a poor candidate for the drug trials.  The patient became so insistent that the doctor finally obtained sugar pills from the pharmacy and told the patient it was the drug he wanted. His tumors began to dissolve and he was eventually discharged.  There's more to the story, but you get the idea.  The mind/emotions are powerful ingredients in health and healing, as is the performance of the "shaman".  

Meanwhile, hot off the NY Times press:  Fish as medicine for rheumatoid arthritis  https://tinyurl.com/y7tdo4ku

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